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Translated by ALFRED G. SANFTLEBEN 
Published by the Author 

PRICE SEVENTY FIVE CENTS 

Ten Copies or more Fifty Cents per copy 

Address Mory Bermtn 

4221 East Side Boulevard* 

Los Angeles, Cal. 



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Copyrighted 1922 

by 

MORY BERMAN 

All rights reserved 



APR 12 1922 
©CU659553 



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A Word of Cheer 

December 27th, 1921. 
Mr. Mory Berman, 

4221 Eastside Boulevard, 
Los Angeles, Cal. 
Dear Mory: — 

I write you this to express my deep appreciation of the 
pleasure in reading your story entitled "AUTUMN LEAVES," 
truly a work of art and expressive of the life and experiences 
of the writer. 

You have here touched upon the sublime in photoplay art 
and it will take the combined ability of a director versed in the 
art of the present drama and that of seeing things as they 
really exist. 

Unhappily there are today few that are able to grasp the 
deep thoughts you have achieved. You have gone beyond the 
best of us in portraying "life as it really is." 

You have here a drama of a master mind and the writer 
awaits with anticipation the man or set of men that will pro- 
duce this drama which will go down to posterity as the "film 
supreme " 

"AUTUMN LEAVES" is truly a master piece and I pre- 
dict that it will some day be heralded to the world as a super 
production. 

Very sincerely yours, 
(Signed) ELMER N. WORKMAN, 

Scenario Editor. 



LlZZIZZZi 



Autumn Leaves 3 

The curtain opens to our recital of incidents in Russia of old, 
in the year of 1890, and we see revealed before our eyes the 
following: 

A willow basket swings to and fro, suspended on a rope 
drawn through one of the beams supporting the roof of the 
house. The basket is also in an up-and-down motion, and 
looking into it we perceive the cause in a pair of twins, al- 
ready in a struggle, it seems, with the grim world into which 
a cruel fate has thrown them, unasked. 

Not far from the primitive cradle an overturned table. Next 
to it a samovar, turned upside down, with some still smoking 
embers. In a little distance broken dishes, scattered knives 
and forks, a pitcher with milk, a broken glass-dish with rem- 
nants of butter from which a famished black cat is furtively 
eating. Rolled a little farther off a large round loaf of black 
bread, partly cut. 

To the right of the door opening to the narrow street a 
shapeless mass, vaguely betraying a human body, face down- 
ward, surrounded by pieces of broken furniture. Across the 
back of the inert body the broken, heavy, wooden leg of a bed. 

The half open door admits the dim light of a late afternoon 
that bathes all visible and indiscernable things in vague gray 
shadows. 

Farther in the back, half tumbled over, a bed standing on 
three legs, its contents upturned as if gripped by a storm, and 
from under it, partly protruding, a woman's body To the 
right of the bed a brick-stove with open door through which 
a thin whisp of smoke is blown into the room. To the left of 
the bed a door leads into a second room, but one look into 
it is bound to kill in us for ever our peace of mind, and to de- 
stroy for all times our faith in all things and beings! 

A large shape, cloaked in black, approaches through the door 
from the street, looks about, furtively enters the room, and, 
stepping over the prostrate body, walks decisively up to the 
suspended cradle. 

- The tall shadow bends over it. Two fat arms of a woman 
with greedy fingers reach from under the cloak, stop for a 
moment, undecided as to the choice between boy and girl; 
then grasp quick one of the quivering bodies, hiding it in the 
folds of the cloak; and the gaunt shadow passes out again into 
the twilight 

The half-starved cat is undisturbed and still greedily busy 
over the cracked' butter-dish. 

* * * 

The wings of the darkening night cover all things from 
vision until a light appears, at the entrance from the little 
street, emanating from a lantern in the hands of a tall, raw- 
boned man dressed in a much-worn army-overcoat. In the 
flickering l : ght we barely are able to discern the dim outlines 
of the head with a fur cap, dark caverns of the eyes, and a 
long black beard. With a kick of his heavy boots the now ar- 



4 Autumn Leaves 

rival flings back the door to admit his burly form. With up- 
lifted lantern he enters and takes no other notice of the body 
than to shove it wide out of his way with another kick, spitting 
quite unconcerned. 

In the middle of the room he halts, lifts up the lantern to 
the level of his eyes, carefuly examining everything around 
him. A wail comes from the lone child in the cradle, fright- 
ened by the flickering flame of the lantern; and at the same 
moment the cat is heard also, disturbed in her hasty meal. 

The visitor steps quick up to the swinging cradle, bends over 
the tiny mite of humanity, and exclaims: "O Jesus! That is 
too much; they should not go so far!" After crossing himself 
he adds: "Come with me, you little worm"; and with his 
clumsy fingers lifting the child by its diaper, like a little kit- 
ten, he walks out of the room. 

* * * 

Grisa Fedorowich, a wood-chopper, tall, with a bent back, 
a thin beard and long eagle-beak of a nose, and small gray cat- 
eyes. For the thin beard and prominent nose he has to thank 
his wife. There he is, almost entirely arms and legs con- 
nected by the mis-shapen torso of a gorilla. A coward when 
his beloved wife rolls up her sleeves, ready to grab him by 
the nape of his neck. 

These two noble creatures inhabit a dilapidated house in the 

foul ghetto of K . This "palatial" residence is barely 

visible, because walled-in on all sides by piles of stacked-up 
kindling-wood, and fencing: — "night work!" His excellency, 
Grisa Fedorowich, is stretched out, in his clothes, on top of 
the large tile-stove, and smokes his pipe. The room is large; 
there is a broken table with an oil lamp on it; a large wooden 
bed, filled with straw, upon which a goat is chewing her cud. 
Upon the stone-floor roam some chickens, ducks, and two 
white geese. The balance of the furniture is of a correspond- 
ing character. 

Every time our worthy Grisa spits from his high perch upon 
the stone-floor the chickens hurry to the spot, and he lifts up 
his head, calling out in disgust: "Akh! crazy chickens, always 
hungry! You'll eat up the hair of my head; but eggs there 
are none. They seem to . be frozen out. Oh you parasites, 
phew." and he spits again. 

Then turning about, and casting an eager look upon the 
door he exclaims: "And where is my Matka?" his face ex- 
pressing impatient expectancy. A sound from outside of the 
door draws his attention and he looks in that direction with 
the intentness of a dog waiting for his master. 

The rather low door opens, and in bends the tall, dark frame 
of the woman, whom Grisa greets with the words: "Look out 
for your little head!" "Shut your mouth, you monkey," she 
retorts, and continues: "You better step down from your roost 
and help me to get off this cape." 

Groaning he slowly obeys the command, and helps her to 
unwrap. In so doing he sighs: "Akh, Matka, you grow taller 



Autumn Leaves 5 

all the time, like a tower, and I am drying-up ever more." 

"Grisa, quicker, or I" , her voice rises, and he falls in: 

"I will alright, alright," and his hastening fingers untie the 
cord of the pelerine, unveiling in their full majesty the 250 
pounds of the woman's massive body, with the little babe in 
her arms. 

Grisa crosses himself of a sudden and asks: "What is that. 
Matka?" "That is a child, you idiot! Take it!" She places 
the little body in his arms. "I have found it, and we are go- 
ing to bring it up." 

He rocks the baby awkwardly in his arms, while she drops 
herself into a seat, short of breath, her bosom heaving vehe- 
mently, like the billows of a stormy sea. 

"Did you make borsht ready, Grisa?" He does not answer. 
"Muzhik!" she shouts, "how about the borsht?" But Grisa 
seems lost in thought, and big tears trickle down his cheeks, 
glistening like pearls in the scant beard, all unbeknown to 
himself. 

At this her head sinks down to her bosom, and each one is 
absorbed in the own inner soul-chambers of silence. 

Nicolai Ivanich, or, as the neighbors prefer, Nicolai Pianicha, 
i. e. "drunkard,'' a basket-weaver, lives in a cellar. The only 
window, on the level with the yard, faces upon a splendor of 
piles of manure, bones, hoops, and bottles, but not a single 
flower. The floor is of baked loam. Walls and ceiling are 
damp and dark. In the rear of the room indefinite objects 
loom out of the darkness. 

The work-bench stands by the window, upon it bundles of 
willow-rods, and a bottle of brandy; and where the brandy is, 
is also his life-companion in peace and war. Who of the two 
drinks more is hard to tell; all that is sure is that both of them 
drink. For this reason she makes baskets, purchases brandy, 
quarrels with the neighbors, and tries to rub out of her ab- 
domen the cramp-pains, caused either by too much drink, or 
by recently acquired blows of matrimony. She is of medium 
height, with a fat, greasy face. 

But Nicolai has also his good sides. For the rest they are 
devout people who go to church on Sundays. On the way 
back from church they are joined by friends, and near-friends, 
and when they sit down af the table, everything gets smoothed 
out. But this does not convey the idea that the table is al- 
ways to be found in the same position; for that depends on 
the degree to which the "spirit" might move it. 

Anita Ivanich is seated upon a box, at the work-bench; 
pulls out some willow-rods; goes to the bottle for a little com- 
fort; and falls to her work like a man. A few tallow-candles 
upon the work-bench dimly reveal the long-stretched room in 
all its rough nakedness She gets restive, and sings a little 
song, to encourage herself, casting timid, sidelong glances upon 
the wretchedness of her abode, and again she seeks solace in 
the bottle. The door is opened violently from the outside, 



6 Autumn Leaves 

Anita looking about, surprised at the unusual commotion; the 
uncorked bottle still in her hand, just withdrawn from the lips. 

At the threshold looms the powerful frame of Nicolai Ivan- 
ich, one foot on the last step outside, one in the room; and in 
his mighty paw he still holds the tiny bundle of humanity by 
the diaper, like a kitten carried by the fur of its neck. 

Anita stares at him open-mouthed. "Nu, what do you sit 
there like a dummy? Look what I have brought you, a little 
jew." "Where did you get him?" she exclaims, recovering her 
wits. "Hah, to the Devil where I took him! We have set- 
tled account with the jews today; and here, you see," — lifting 
the blinking child up in the air — , "This is a little Blochmann; 
he will grow up a good Christian, God help me! What do you 
sit there, you half-dead creature? We haven't any of our own." 

Seeing that anger is risino- in him, she gets up heavily, and 
waddles up to the child "Why don't you take it?" he roars, 
with voluminous expectoration, and stretches towards her the 
whimpering child. He rises to his full height, spitting in con- 
tempt: "Always crying; Jewish blood!" 

Then he walks up to the table, seizes the bottle, lifts it up 
to the light, with squinted eye measuring its contents with his 
fineers, and breaks out in anp-er: "Whv, Matka, you are going 
to get it in the neck, for you have aeam drunk more than your 
share" And with these words his neck, and that of the bottle, 
become one. 

The bibulous woman rocks tbe crving child in her arms, 
under the stimulant swaying rather back-and-forward instead 
of sideways, and slowly she thus wobbles to the shadowy rear 
of the vast room, towards the bed. 

* * * 

Years come and pass. Nicolai Ivanich does not live to im- 
prove the conditions and his own self, but just the reverse. On 
a beautiful Sunday of which the following happenings are re- 
corded, he loses his wife and is left alone in the world with 
the emaciated, five years old, little waif 

Cominer home from church good brethren came along with 
them. Krermikof was the most welcome guest: the hardest 
dn'nker of Russia; some 50 years old. 6V2 feet high, weighing 
220 pounds; in a fur coat reaching to his knees; a large mouth: 
a great, coarse, black beard, tough as horsehair, a well-reddened 
nose; a rope as girdle for the fur. -That is all. 

And of his wife there is nothing to say. That she is a 
chicken-thief was a secret. A head smaller she is than her 
worthy husband. In times of war he is always in wise 
retreat. 

And the Dubowchis, auiet people when thev are asleep; 
souls of dogs; both fat like flapiacks, which is not their own 
fault, though. But on Sundays they become imbued with 
saintliness. 

The fifth guest was a horse-skinner: tall as a tree; in woven 
birch-rind shoes, who plays the accordion and lives to sin in 
this world. 



Autumn Leaves 7 

The just described aristocrats sat down at the table, on a 
low, long bench, and ate and drank, and were merry. The 
little worm laid in the corner of the bed and weeped. 

A large loaf of black bread was torn to pieces by eager 
hands, and the chunks disappeared with steaming bowls of 
soup. Other cravings were satisfied with vodka of which 
the contents of several bottles disappeared in short order. 

Finally the table was pushed aside to make room for the 
next number on the regular Sunday program. 

Anita Ivanich danced; Nicolai played the balalaika; the 
horse-skinner his accordion The others applauded with hands 
and feet. And Princess Anita, in the surge of her heated 
blood, raised up her skirt and danced a Mazurka. The hot 
soup and flaming vodka had set her internally on fire, and 
she fell down, all of a sudden, unable to rise again. 

The center of attraction thus tragically eliminated, the 
assembled guests soon made themselves scarce. On the same 
afternoon Anita breathed her last. Nicolai shed honest tears, 
in which, full-heartedly, joined the child. 

The condition of the orphan did perhaps not become much 
worse through this bereavement; but most certainly they did 
not improve any. 

At the age of 8 the orphan-boy is already helping to turn 
willow-rods, sweeps the room; is ill-fed but well-beaten at 
every occasion; clothed in the worst of rags. But the pale 
face is illuminated by a pair of clear, large eyes which prove 
mighty helpful to him in times of beatings, because he fixes 
them firmly upon the eyes of Nicolai Ivanich, who is unable 
to withstand their mute power of appeal. "Akh, go to the 
devil with your Yiddish eyes"; with these words he was wont 
to wind up with a kick. After such a scene Nicolai always 
claws his hairy breast; an evil taste is in his mouth as if 
wanting to spit out his very heart and soul. 

* * .* 

Grisa Fedorowich is a man of fixed habits. When he chops 
wood for somebody he always needs a helper. The work of 
the helper is very simple, yet an imperative necessity to the 
worker. All he has to do is to stand by his side all day long 
and exclaim "Akh!" every time the heavy axe descends upon 
the blocks of wood. 

The rhythmical, plaintive grunt seems to imbue the toiler 
with a new strength not of his own, and he used to pay, in 
bygone days, five kopeks a day to a fountain of borrowed 
vitality in the shape of a tired little boy who was to call 
out "Akh!" at each stroke of his master's axe. 

But now he has a helper of his own. After the girl has 
reached the age of 8 he fetches her along to his work — rain 
or shine. When her throat becomes parched from the cease- 
less self-same outcry, he enlivens her with words of abuse. 
Coming home from her daily grind she is permitted to do 
chores around the house. 



8 Autumn Leaves 

Mrs. Fedorowich, during these eight . years, has accumu- 
lated still more fat. For that reason she does not leave her 
broad chair, where she reposes, knitting, and issuing com- 
mands, and she sees to it that little Azhurka's clothes are of 
the poorest imaginable. In contrast to the ill-assorted clothes 
of the little girl are its curly, black hair and the delicate face 
with the kindly caressing eyes. 

We see that eight years have brought no change in the ap- 
pearance of the household, except that the geese are replaced 
by two little pigs, the care for which is part of little Azhurka's 
daily grind. 

* * *. 

On an early morning Azhurka steps out of the nearby store 
with a bottle of kerosene. One of her wooden shoes gets 
caught between two cobblestones, and, slipping from her 
fingers, the bottle is shattered upon the ground with a crash. 
The little girl arises from her fall and stands immobile, look- 
ing down upon the wreckage, with tears in her eyes. 

Little Maxim is engaged upon an errand with two baskets 
for delivery. Ragged and barefooted, he walks along, whis- 
tling to himself, unconcerned. But at the sight of the crying 
girl his inexpensive enjoyment comes to a sudden end Like 
a true boy, he looks intently upon the wreckage, sniffing the 
spilled kerosene, and a great pity surges up in him. 

"Are you afraid?" he asks kindly and she lifts her arm 
from the tear-stained eyes to cast a sidelong glance upon the 
source of an unexpected sympathy. With a sob she answers, 
"Sure, I am afraid!" "And what are you going to do about 
it?" he counters. At this question her frail body is racked 
with a new spasm of sobbing. 

A sudden inspiration illuminates the boy's eyes as he ex- 
claims, "Wait a while here; soon I'll have some money." With 
quick determination the little boy runs off, with the thin 
hands firmly pressing the precious baskets to his body, and 
in a little while he returns again, his hand filled with copper 
coins. Out of this wealth he picks 15 kopeks and hands them 
over to the little girl, with the words, "Take this; go and 
find yourself another bottle, and get your kerosene." 

At these words she seems to brighten up; but immediately 
a cloud overshadows her features. "But you will get the 
beating now instead of me." He nods vehemently, "Maybe 
I do, maybe I don't! What's your name?" "Me? Call 
me Azhurka. And you?" "Maxim!" With this mutual intro- 
duction embarrassment overtakes them. Yet with an effort, 
the boy recovers his manliness, takes off his cap and follows 
with a kind look the girl, who departs with lowered head. 

Not before he has almost reached the house Maxim realizes 
fully that a beating is in store for him. His frail little body 
twists and squirms in anticipation of the hail of blow in pros- 
pect He casts a sad look upon the handful of coppers, mur- 
muring, "Sixty kopeks! He surely will beat me!" With this 



Autumn Leaves 9 

he peeps into the window to find out the mood of his enemy. 
At the sight of that worthy spitting vehemently his lips mur- 
mur, "Oh! I am going to get it hard this time!" Tears 
trickle down his emaciated cheeks in the mental vision of 
the torment to come. He walks down the few steps, trembling 
like a leaf. 

"Ah, there you are, you black dog! Where have you been 
so long?" Maxim is already in a torrent of tears, and high- 
pitched exclamations of pain. Ivanich rises from the work 
table and asks again, "Where have you been?" "I have 
•been — I have — I have been hunting for 15 kopeks which 
I have lost." "What? That can't be Tell that to your 
grandmother," and with these words he reaches for the leather 
strap of his pants, grunting, "Hm! soon we'll know every- 
thing." 

With each blow the thin body of the little boy squirms, but 
the lips remain firmly pressed together. Ivanich gets sick of 
the whole affair, winding up with a kick as a sign for the 
victim to withdraw to the bed. And the grim executioner 
blusters out, "A Jew! What can you expect?" 

* * ■ * 

A gray day of autumn in Russia. A row of damp, wooden 
houses, moist like bathed in tears. The heaven overcast with 
haunting, hazy shadows, as if forlorn. A thin rain drizzles 
down upon the narrow street, filled with mud and mire, oft 
reaching up to the knee, all of it looking in desolation like 
black wounds of Mother Earth. 

On such a promising day Fedorowich has dragged him- 
self through the little street Thanks to his high boots he 
has been spitting and cussing less than he is capable of, and 
Azhurka follows in a little distance like a wet kitten. Grisa, 
with the sawhorse upon his shoulders, looks like a wandering, 
uprooted tree. 

The saw with the axe and splitting-wedges are carried by 
the girl. Unceasing are her efforts to extricate her wooden 
shoes from the mire so that they should not get stuck. Flop, 
flop, she struggles along. Of a sudden she pulls up a thin 
foot, wrapped in rags, and calls out, "Ail" But the heavy 
weight of the tools does not permit her to remain standing 
upon one leg; and with a splash the unshoed foot goes into 
the gutter with another plaintive "Ai!" In order not to be 
left behind she throws an anxious look upon the long wet 
body of her master, slips her foot into the evasive wooden 
shoe without taking the trouble of emptying its contents, and 
then runs after him. She is clad in a man's coat with long 
sleeves. What she wears beneath it the world will have to 
guess. 

At last they stop at a two-story house, surrounded by a 
small garden, naked trees shorn of their foliage by the autumn 
winds. In the yard is piled up a mountain of wet, round logs. 
A dog tears at his chain to get at them Little Azhurka 
trembles of cold, and in fear of the dog alike. 

The servant, Wanja. a woman in her sixties, with a double 



10 Autumn Leaves 

chin, small, gray, watery eyes, of medium stature, good-natured, 
with an upturned nose. Her attention is drawn upon the girl. 
Her low forehead displays wrinkles due to attempts towards 
understanding. 

"Hey! Say, Grisa, what do you drag that little rabbit along 
for? And in such a rain! Don't you have any heart at all?" 
He gives her an angry look, waves one hand in deprecation, 
and starts to saw one of the logs. 

Wanja's pride is stung by the answer, and it increases her 
sympathy for the little girl. Her temper rises, and she calls 
out, "Say, Grisa, you old wood-thief!" She takes a step or. 
two in his direction. Azhurka stands by, shivering of cold, 
and trembling of fear, since she cannot make up her mind 
as to who of the two is to be friend or foe. 

Grisa lifts up his head, casting upon Wanja a look filled 
with such a hatred that she stops, afraid to advance a further 
step. "Go back to the kitchen and boil potatoes, old woman, 
and I shall attend to my own work in peace!" And I'll go 
into the house, to talk to his excellency, and he will show 
you all right." 

"You go to the black year!" he roars, throwing his saw 
aside, and glowering at her like an old beast still aware of 
the soundness of its fangs. "Eh, you old hag, begone!" he 
exclaims, advancing upon her. She steps backward with the 
words, "What! You will beat a woman? I shall go to his 
excellency, all right," and quick she disappears behind the 
door. 

The rain has increased powerfully and pours down by 
buckets. Little Azhurka sits down upon a wet log and 
huddles herself up in Grisa' s ragged and wet fur coat. After 
he has sawed a few logs she hurriedly rises, takes her stand 
at his side and is ready for the toil assigned to her vocal 
chords. 

* * * 

A richly furnished room, tastefully arranged. The walls 
adorned with pictures of persons of standing and generals, 
because his excellency is a general himself, a bachelor, Stanis- 
law, about 50 years old, his hair sprinkled with silver-gray. 
High, slender, and of proud bearing; expressive, beautiful 
eyes, a Van Dyke; calm like a swan, he sits in a fauteuil, 
wrapped in a Persian robe. His Excellency reads a book. 

Wanja has stopped at the doorstep to the salon; and, con- 
scious of the fact that it needs only a tear on her part to 
waken his good heart, and lofty and free mind, she wipes 
her eyes with a corner of her apron. He looks up from 
his book with a screwed-up expression, as if meeting with 
something habitual, and exclaims, "Good morning, Wanja! 
What is the matter?" "He has insulted me," is the answer. 
"Grisa Fedorowich, the woodchopper, because I have scolded 
him for taking along his little girl in such a weather." Stanis- 
law, for a while, is lost in thought. "That is all right, Wanja; 
you have a good heart. Go and call both into the kitchen 
for a bite to eat; soon I shall step out, too." 



Autumn Leaves 11 

She bows with a glad courtesy, and goes about her mission 
as ordered by her master. At the backdoor she stops for an 
instant with a triumphant smile. Then she puts her head 
through the half-opened door and shouts at the top of her 
shrill voice, "Hey! Grisa, come in the kitchen. His Excel- 
lency invites you and the little girl for a bite to eat." With 
these words she slams the door, without waiting for an 
answer. 

Grisa stops in his work, shakes his head from side to side, 
scratches himself in the neck, with grouchy grunts, and slowly 
walks up to the house, gladly followed by shivering Azhurka. 
Wanja is busy around the samovar, stirring up the embers, 
blowing into them like bellows, slightly choking and cough- 
ing over the smoke. 

On a little shelf back from and above the kitchen table, two 
small candles splutter at the side of an ikon representing Christ 
crucified. To the left of the table, in the usual inclosure, 
under the brick fireplace, a few chickens are busily picking 
wheat grains from a metal plate. 

Grisa steps in uncertain, stops at the door, looks about, 
and at perceiving the ikon over the table, he takes of! his 
shapka, and crosses himself reverently, while his eyes are 
already roaming for a place at the table as well as scrutinizing 
the zakusky spread upon it. Wanja pays no attention what- 
ever to him, which makes him feel like lost. He walks up 
to the spread, takes a seat, sighs, and makes a start with a 
little glass. The narrow fringe of scant hair in the back of 
his head is in fullest harmony with the rest of his appearance. 
Though feeling quite out of place, and unde* the table, in 
embarrassment, shifting from foot to foot, his hands and 
mouth are, just the same, extremely busy with the food spread 
before them. 

Wanja is turning her attention towards the forlorn little 
waif who has followed, unnoticed by him, in his steps, un- 
decided, and seems to be deeply interested in the craning necks 
of the busy chickens. 

Grisa is getting ever more closely acquainted with the con- 
tents of the magic bottle, assumes an air of dignity, which 
is a perfect misfit, as evidenced by furtive, fearsome looks 
cast upon Wanja for effect. With every drink taken he shakes 
his shoulders and gets busy skinning the herring before him 
with new ardor, eager to do the best work in his life. 

* * * 

Stanislaw appears at the door; the hands folded on his back; 
mute, majestic, tactful, in a pose as if about the strategy of 
capturing an enemy fortress. Grisa wants to arise respect- 
fully, but a motion of His Excellency's hand invites him to 
remain seated. Paying no further attention to the wood- 
chopper, and turning to the trusted servant, the general calls 
out, "Bring the little girl to me in the salon." 

Azhurka is filled with awe of the high gentleman, and her 
shining eyes are fixed upon the back of the tall figure step- 



12 Autumn Leaves 

ping silently out of the kitchen. Wanja takes little Azhurka 
by the hand and follows the disappearing impressive form 
with tear-stained eyes. 

Grisa watches it all with unsteady looks. But when he finds 
himself alone, or rather unobstructed, his hands and mouth 
become more steady in their food-and-drink absorbing activity. 
Yet of a sudden the entire complex machinery of hands, jaws 
and throat comes to a standstill. The fire of a thought glim- 
mers up in his little eyes, and a tremble pervades his entire 
body. He shakes knowingly his head, and a pleased smile 
overspreads his face. He squints one eye, strokes with one 
hand his scant beard, passing the other over his forehead, and 
then he becomes all attention in order to catch the trend 
of the conversation in the adjoining room. 

Stanislaw is in the salon, seated in his beloved fauteuil, and 
fastens his mild, yet penetrating glances upon the Lttle girl, 
standing all a-tremble before him Old Wanja is equally not 
at ease. Only when a smile endears his face, and he begins 
to ply the little waif with questions, the frightened girl, and 
the old woman alike, feel a weight taken from their shoulders. 

Of all the questions addressed to her, little Azhurka is moved 
deepest by the one, "Would you like to live here?'.' Only she 
answers, "I do not know; I am afraid." "Afraid! Of whom?" 
She remains silent. Stanislaw's mind, in the meanwhile is 
tremendously active, driving towards a momentous decision. 
He casts one inquiring look upon Wanja, "What do you think 
about it? Hah! Take her upstairs, and fix her up. Do you 
feel yet strong enough to watch over her?" "Certainly, your 
Excellency; I An do it all right!" And joyfully she conducts 
the frightened little girl upstairs. 

When Stanislaw appears again at the kitchen door, Grisa 
is rubbing his hands, a vision of good business enlivening his 
features with an unholy gleam. But at noticing the presence 
of His Excellency his face becomes a blank, he assumes an 
attitude of utter unconcern, and even starts to eat again, in 
order to strengthen the desired effect, just as if he had not 
heard a word of what had been going on in the next room; 
his little tricky eyes under the low forehead all the while 
shiftily watching His Excellency. Stanislaw looks him through 
and through, with one searching and understanding glance. 

"Sell me your girl, Grisa!" Grisa swallows a bite and crosses 
himself, distorting his features as if he had heard something 
impossible. 

"What are you talking about, your Excellency? To sell a 
child! Why, it is entirely out of the question!" 

"Grisa, but if I put you behind the bars for gross neglect! 
Do you know that your child is sick?" 

ligpfrinH thp bars! Your Excellency wouldn't do that I 
have a wife. Both of us have souls. We believe in God!" 
He contorts his face into a tearful grimace. 

"Maybe you have a soul, but you are slippery like as an eel 



Autumn Leaves 13 

just the same. And so you'll take ten thousand rubles, cash 
money." 

"I am slippery, all right, your Excellency, I'll admit that 
much. But, but — her — my wife," he stammers. 

"Do you believe in God, Grisa? Will you see your child 
happy?" Grisa's conscience begins to hurt a little. The 
thought of the bargain becomes uppermost in his mind, rather 
unsatisfactorily as to the amount, and he mumbles, "Hm — 
ten thousand — cash money?" 

"Yes, cash money, Grisa; but should you ever be up to dirty 
tricks, it will mean Siberia for you; mark it well!" Grisa 
shivers and then says humbly, "Good, your Excellency; what 
you say is all true. I am getting old, and am hardly able 
to work very much longer. And then, Azhurka will be happy." 
Stanislaw sits down at the table, calls Wanja, orders her to 
bring pen, ink and paper; and thus Azhurka's fate is contracted 
between the two unequal parties in the deal. 

Grisa carefully counts his money, eager to expectorate in 
order to hide his glad emotion, but he does not dare to reveal 
his true feelings under the steady gaze of Wanja. Slowly 
he turns and shuffles towards the door. As he is about to 
open it, the general calls him back to the table, fills a glass 
with wodka, looks the man squarely into the shifting eyes and 
says earnestly: 

"Grisa, drink this, and understand me well. I do not want 
to see your face again. Do you get me?" 

"Yes, your Excellency; I shall be gone for good." And 
with bowed head he turns, and walks out into the gray world — 
a mere shadow absorbed by shadows. 

* * * 

Since Nicolai Ivanich has buried his wife he is drunk every 
hour of the day. One fine Sunday, sitting as usual at the 
table, little Maxim serves the guests, who have already imbibed 
more than is good for their heads, becoming kind of affec- 
tionate towards each other. As soon as a bottle is emptied, 
all chip together and send out Maxim upon another act of 
mercy. At first they chatter of horses and pigs; then they 
slap each other upon shoulders and knees. At last they insult 
mutually their noble souls; the vodka adds its own blows, 
and the battleflag is unfurled in the stormwinds. 

At this stage of the game little Maxim begins to look out 
for safety, taking refuge either under the bed, or, as oppor- 
tunity affords it, out into the narrow street; as he reaches the 
door, an earthen pot follows him, crashing at the heels of 
his hurrying feet. And thus he escapes the hell behind him, 
and walks the streets, the hands in his pockets, with the 
thoughts of premature age in his little head. 

In this unseeing meditation he brushes against little Azhurka, 
who is out for a walk with old Wanja. In her rich dresses 
Maxim hardly recognizes her. Azhurka is immensely glad to 
see him. Old Wanja is not quite satisfied with the meeting. 

Maxim stands with lowered head, with an embarrassed 



14 Autumn Leaves 

smile, casting looks of curiosity upon her fine clothes. At 
last he gets bolder and looks her in the face. "You are rich 
now, ha!" "And you?" she counters. He sadly bends his 
forehead in silence. "Did you get a beating for the fifteen 
kopeks." "Yes, a good one." After all, Wanja gets a liking 
for the boy. The girl asks, "Will you come to my house 
and play with me?" "Gladly," he nods assent. "Where do 
you live?" "Near by the yellow church. Will you come to 
see me?" "Sure," he answers, swaying undecidedly upon hiy 
heels, turned half about, and fixing a roguish glance upon 
her. Then he runs off, in his hurry losing his cap, which 
makes him quite sheepish in the presence of the girl and her 
companion. He bends down, picks up the cap, and slowly 
walks on, followed by their eyes until he disappears. 

* * * 

On the following forenoon he comes to her to play in the 
yard. All the while he shrinks from contact with her. When 
the rubber ball hits him over his heart he begins to weep. 
With tears of compassion she wants to put her arm around 
his shoulder, but he sensitively withdraws from her grasp, 
which scares her quite a bit. 

"Don't — don't touch me," he cries, "it gives me pain." 
"Where does it hurt you?" "All over it hurts." With this 
he rolls back the torn sleeve over one arm and displays an 
elbow blue and green, of blows received; the skin of the 
color of a suffocated chicken. The faces of both are bathed 
in tears. Following a sudden impulse she kisses his arm, and 
again tries to lay her hand upon his shoulder. "No — no — little 
dear, don't do it, I beg you; it hurts. Last night father got 
angry; and there, you see!" and he opens his shirt, and shows 
a body, beaten and bruised, discolored and emaciated. 

Wanja steps out with two apples. From the distance their 
tears fill her with suspicion. But as she steps nearer, and 
notices the poor, maltreated body, tears well up in her eyes. 
"Where did you get beaten up like that, little fellow?" she 
asks. He struggles with words, but all he can utter is the 
word "papa." Old Wanja reaches for her apron, and weeps 
bitterly. The children weep in silence, and even the dog, 
touched by an indistinct sympathy, lifts up his head to heaven, 
and breaks out into a dismal howl. Wanja gets first the 
mastery over her sacred tears, and yells at the dog, "What 
are you howling about, you black-eyes? You are not human!" 
She conducts the crying children into the kitchen, and then 
goes to look for His Excellency. 

Stanislaw is seated at the. table covered with books and 
papers, intent upon writing. "Good morning again, your 
Excellency." "Good morning, Wanja, what has happened 
today? You have been crying!" A few more tears she sheds, 
speechless. Stanislaw becomes alarmed. "Tell me, Wanja. 
Maybe I want to cry, too; only I don't know what about!" 
he insists with a sunny smile. "Come downstairs, your Ex- 
cellency and you'll see for yourself — you'll see for yourself." 



Autumn Leaves 15 

And with these sobbed words she turns about to go, followed 
by him. 

At the kitchen door Stanislaw halts in his steps, and takes 
all in at a glance. Azhurka is busy placing a cold compress 
upon the sore arm, while the boy is quivering in intense pain. 
The general walks up to the two children, and is struck by a 
strong likeness in their features. 

Azhurka takes off the wet towel, exposing the ill-treated 
arm, and, with pitying eyes, looking up to the tall man, she 
exclaims, "Look, daddy, he is like this all over his body." 
And, unable to restrain herself any further, she tenderly 
places her arms around Maxim's neck and begins to weep 
silently. Maxim is hardly able to master his pain, manfully 
gritting his teeth; but finally his tortured body gets the best 
of his brave intentions and a cry of excruciating pain comes 
from his lips,, at which the little girl releases him instantly, 
quite frightened. 

Stanislaw, tall and erect, clenches his fists until droplets of 
blood emerge, where the nails have entered the tender flesh. 
Old Wanja sits in a corner, crossing herself and uttering 
prayers. The stern general unbends himself, opens the shirt 
over the quivering breast of the small boy, and it turns black 
before his eyes. 

"Holy Mary! Who are you, my son, and who has beaten 
you up like that?" "I am the son of Nicolai Ivanich, the 
basket weaver. And it is he that beats me like that." "Have 
you a mother?" "No." Where do you live?" "Number 4, 
Nemecky Gasse, in the cellar." 

His Excellency turns to Wanja, "Go, Wanja, get the doctor. 
I'll be out for a walk to think matters over." Old Wanja 
smears two slices of white bread thick with butter, for the 
children, and then goes on her master's errand. The children 
remain alone, together, the harmony flowing from their little 
hearts a soothing balm for their deep sorrows. 

* * * 

On his way to the basket maker, Stanislaw calls a police- 
man, -who is loafing on his beat, under cover of his overcoat 
enjoying an illegal cigarette. The general shows him his 
booklet of identification, and the official stands attention, 
"To your service, Excellency!" Then he follows in duty 
bound, after a few steps turning his head with a mournful 
look upon the glimmering cigarette he had to drop. "Too 
bad!" he muses, and goes on. 

When they enter the basket maker's cave-dwelling they 
find that worthy in boots, stretched out full length upon his 
bed like a sack of straw. The policeman with his sword hits, 
not all too gently, the soles of the sleeper's boots, who sits 
up, aroused, calling out to the officer, "What brings you here, 
you shiny button?" But when he notices the presence of 
Stanislaw he shrinks back into himself. 

His Excellency, calmly and thoroughly, scans everything 
he can lay eyes on, and then turns to Nicolai, "1 have come 



16 Autumn Leaves 

to have you arrested, Nicolai!" The basket maker is dumb- 
tounucu, biuLLCiiiig, Have me arrested: Wnat ior: " "iou 
asK wnyf i ou nave a t>un auout ten or tweive years oid: ' 
"ies. "You nave beaten nun up mce an appier" "ies; 
bui inat is my business!'' 

Stanisiaw looks clown upon him with loathing, "You are 
no human beuig! i am gomg to nave you arrested, and 
that will make your sons an anair ot my own." Witn these 
words ne turns away, and wants out, leaving tne miscreant in 
care ot tne gendarm. 

Nicolai is on tne jump to follow the general, but halts in 
his eiiUiL, suddenly iu&uig his nerve. me Omcer, Keen in 
detecting tne moiai breaKUown, taKes advantage 01 tne con- 
dition, nas nardiy any neeu ior usmg nis weapon, and, easily 
subduing nis prisoner, leans nun away. 

Arrived at Home, btanislaw tinds the doctor still present. 
Little Maxim is m AzaurKa s mgiudress, snUgiy tucKed away 
in ner bed. His eyes are neavy witn sieep, ana oiny witn an 
errort ne keeps tnem open. Azhurita is sitting upon tne 
end of tne bed, stroKing his hands with tender lingers, and 
in each others laces are renected their wan smiles. 

Old Wanja, standing aside, is watching it all, and unrest 
tills her, as sne sees tne doctor whisper nno His Excellency's 
ears, with a grave expression in his leatures; the general 
listening with sadly bowed head. To dispell the heavy cloud 
btamsiaw orders vVanja to bring the caratte wrtn cognac, 
and tnen he drinks solemnly a toast with the doctor, whose 
gray naus oner no objection whatever to sucn a proceeding. 

In court the case of the basket weaver takes its regular 
course, and the truth comes to tne hgnt, like oil surging to 
the suriace ot water, 'the boy is, 01 course, not ms own, 
while, aiso, no proots are available to prove his identity, the 
wretched prisoner refusing to give any information in the 
matter, in spite of solitary confinement in a dark cell full of 
rats. Finally he is found guilty and sent to prison. 

Youth — crystal-clear days follow; days that come and pass 
softly like velvet tnreads 

As we raise again the curtain, our eyes rejoice over the 
two 15-year-old young people and the budding love in their 
simple hearts is brougnt to our attention. Maxim is already 
foonsh enough to imagine that he is in love with a beautilul 
Jewish girl, Sorka Weinberg. But it is only on the suriace, 
just enough to arouse the jealousy of Azhurka, and also suffi- 
cient to cause good old Stanisiaw some annoyment. 

A Rendezvous — Sorka Feinberg lives in a half-street. In 
front of her parent's house a windowless shack — the well- 
known typical butcher shop in Russia. Dangling over the 
open door, above which heavy hooks are tastened, hang 
skinned carcasses of muttons, calves, and the like more. 

Ever so often we see fly through the open gate into the 
courtyard the innards of a calf, or a chopped-off leg, or 



Autumn Leaves 17 

again bones and other offal. The customers of this cast-off 
trade are homeless dogs, stray hogs of the neighbors, and 
ravens. The whole yard looks more like a battlefield. The 
cats are too particular, in their innate neatness, to bother 
about the bones sweltering in blood; but just the same they 
disturb the dogs and the ravens in their scavenger feast. 

Especially noticeable are two of the ravens, one of which 
perches upon the back of a very busy, greedily grunting 
hog, while the other is standing upon one leg on the ground, 
near the porker's head, with drooping wings, as if ready for 
the grave; the head turned sideways with a look of inquiry, 
in a sad meditation, or was he thinking at all? Who knows? 

Suddenly a young ram appears upon the scene, in gay 
frolic charging all living things with his itching horns, and 
holds the field alone in the end in a victory without glory. 

Sorka looks out through the back door, as soon as the 
student Maxim appears in the near distance, and both a-tremble 
in the awkwardness of youth they step out together into the 
little half-street, walking side by side, unable to speak a 
word. 

* * * 

It is worthwhile mentioning an incident in Maxim's adoles- 
cence. Maxim was sitting in his room writing a composition. 
Since he had for his subject two heroes in love, beating up 
each other for the same fair damsel, upon the paper, he 
could not help himself taking a part in the scrimmage by 
assisting the weaker of the two, who had his sympathy. 

The picturization of his own head and handiwork possessed 
him so powerfully that he had to get up, beating the air 
vigorously with his fists in defense of his chosen knight, even 
getting hold of a chair, with mighty sweeps of it demolishing 
some of the furniture in the room. 

The fearful racket brought Azhurka and Wanja upon the 
field, whose cries of terror woke him to the realization of his 
true environment, and he stood, bewildered and shamefaced 
in his tracks of destruction. We might call this a good 
prognostication for a budding literary genius. 

* * * 

An important moment in the life of the children is the 
departure of the good general at the Jiead of his corps for the 
Russo-Japanese war. His absence brings Maxim and Azhurka 
closer together again, and often they have bitter petty-quarrels, 
which blind them for the time being to discern their mutual 
love. 

Wanja, the old, faithful servant, is getting more corpulent 
and waddles about like an old duck. But her heart has grown 
by the good times passed through. And with this good heart 
she suffers when it tells her, instinctively, at nightfall, that 
standing outside is lone Sorka wistfully trying to peck through 
the half-closed shutters. 

When Stanislaw returns from the war, he is no more the 
same man. Under the silver-gray of his hair are the pain- 



18 Autumn Leaves 

spiritualized features of a prophet. He is a man very much 
broken in health, whose only bridge to life seems to be his 
two extraordinarily beautiful adopted children The more his 
strength of life is ebbing out, the more tenderly he wraps 
them in his love, like some tender and delicate flowers. But 
to old Wanja he becomes ever more cranky, and she relieves 
her poor heart by weeping, and complaining about it to the 
children. 

Maxim and Azhurka come to the conclusion to try to con- 
a ince him that it would be for the best to sell everything in 
order to go to a health resort in Switzerland, that he might 
recuperate his waning strength and health. They impart their 
mutual understanding to Wanja, who full-heartedly falls in 
with their plans, and all three go downstairs together. 

They find His Excellency seated in the fauteuil, deeply 
interested in a book. The hanging lamp d ffuses a blue light 
over everything. On the table sings the samovar. Slowly 
the kind old man looks up from his book, turns to Maxim 
and asks, "Tell me, what is your faith?" "My faith is in 
truth." "And yours, Azhurka?" "Mine? Oh, yes! In a 
clean conscience." With a sad resigned smile he shakes his 
head at the answers, and his chin is lowered upon his breast 

At this sight the children embrace and kiss their benefactor, 
and with the exuberant fervor of devoted love they lay before 
him their suggestions, trying to convince him of the justice 
of their hopeful plans. At first he does not want to give in, 
and thus give up — a hard thing for the true soldier in the 
best sense of the word. But when the children implore him 
upon their bended knees, with tear-stained faces, he finally 
gives his consent, and right on the next day, already, they 
are on their way to the new destination. 

On the train, of a sudden, his condition takes a turn to 
the worse. After a few days the good man breathes his last, 
after a final admonition to his beloved ones: "Go to America, 
my beloved, get married and be happy" Heart-rendingly 
they cry over the demise of their benefactor, and the mutual 
loss brings them closer to each other. 

A Hamburg-America liner plows her path through the 
mighty main, a black stream of smoke above, a white streak 
of foam in its wake, and on board are two young people, 
whose path through the ocean of life we are still farther to 
follow. 

* * * 

A four-room flat, tastefully furnished. Esther rocks a baby 
in her arms — a glad, young mother. Just now Maxim enters, 
back from his daily task, happily exchanges pleasantries with 
wife and child; and then he helps to set the table A plate 
in his hand, he stops for a moment, absorbed in thought, at 
which she gazes at him in expectancy. 

"A hard day's work, hey, Max?" "No, not that. On the 
car coming home a passenger cast a look upon me, and the 
glance of that man has filled me with a deep sadness. The 



Autumn Leaves 19 

shadows of night seem gathered in him to spread wide from 
his soul, on dark, silent wings. From his looks he is apparently 
a jew, good looking and intelligent, neatly dressed, with a 
bow-tie and with side-whiskers, apparently a writer, some 55 
years old. He looks like a perambulating funeral, and gave 
me the creeps. I am yet filled with a dread presentiment that, 
some day, he is going to throw a heavy rock across the path 
of my life." 

"Ah, forget it!" she tries to comfort him. "Maybe it is only 
a poet unnappy in love!" Both join in a good laugh; but the 
full heart ot Max is lacking in it. They eat their supper in 
meditative silence, which she interrupts with the question: "Are 
you gomg to the club tomght?" "bhall I go, darling?" "Sure! 
go, but don't come home too late." "You are so good!" and he 
kisses her. 

"Perchance he is a member of my club!" muses Max. "Who 
is a member?" "Oh, the man I saw on the car!" She looks 
upon him astonished: "What! You have him still in your 
mind?" "Yes, I can not forget him. It is as if I had seen 
these eyes already somewhere, long, long ago." With these 
words he passes his hand heavily over his face, as if over- 
shadowed by some impending evil. 

"Then don't go to the club, Max!" "Why, now?" "Oh, 
you are liable to meet him again, and a creature of his kind 
disseminates seeds of melancholy. Don't go then." "You 
talk like a child," he retorts in slight anger. "I have a feel- 
ing he has something to tell me." "Well, then go Have you 
a little patience Max?" "What! have you another newly- 
hatched poem?" "Yes." "All right read it." Max wiggles 
under the influence of the effort, and good-humoredly advises 
her not to spoil so much good paper. After supper he helps 
her with the dishes, kisses wife and baby goodbye, and is on 
his way. 

Downstairs two elderly men sit upon the door-step, in earn- 
est conversation. "Yes — yes! Many a man runs into a fire 
to purify himself and find the way to his own self!" These 
words strike Maxim's ears. A tremor pervades his body, and 
with accelerated steps he walks in the direction of the club. 

On the next corner he collides with a man, absentmindedly, 
and asks his pardon, getting for reply: "Certainly! but you 
have spoiled my best corn." 

At the foot of the stairs to the club, a man conies toward 
him, well under the influence of liquor. The new-comer, in an 
attempt of good humor, shows his tongue to Max exclaiming: 
"I am a traveling salesman." "So I see, but you are traveling 
too fast!" At this the commercial traveler clumsily unbuttons 
his coat and shows Max an end of his shirt, hanging out of 
his trousers. Max shouts into his ear: "You are full as a bar- 
rel," and proceeds to ascend the stairs. The full barrel! strug- 
gles frantically to keep its balance, but ultimately must needs 
surrender, sliding down the last eight steps on an ignoble part 
of his anatomy. 



20 Autumn Leaves 

Arrived at the club, Max is out of tune with his environment, 
and does not feel comfortable at all. The heavy clouds of to- 
bacco smoke smother him. The sounds of some instruments 
grate upon his nerves, and he rises in a sudden decision to go 
to the Blue Bird Cafe. 

The Blue Bird Cafe is a good place to pass the time, to your 
heart's delight, at a cup of coffee. Broken members of human 
society take advantage of this opportunity to get a peaceful 
nap, lulled to sleep by operatic music dispensed from a pianola. 
It is kind of a temporary haven of refuge for the homeless. 

Max retires into a corner, gives his order, sits under the 
gathering weight of a dire presentiment of impending evil, and 
he feels as if he were about to stand at parting cross-roads in 
his life. He looks about like for a refuge from his painful 
ihoughts. 

The unknown stranger from the street-car enters, his sombre 
dress but emphasizing his weird impression. His whole atti- 
tude, and his actions seem to be steeped in mystery. Rather 
above medium size, with sharply outlined features, Mr. Tannen- 
baum, a Jewish poet. Their eyes meet, and the poet starts to 
move in the direction of Max, who becomes all eyes, unable 
to move. 

"May I sit down at your table?" asks the poet. "Yes, if 
you please!" answers Max, at the same time feeling that the 
new arrival is bearer of a secret that already throttles his 
throat in an icy grip. He breathes with heavy effort. 

The new-comer gives the waiter his order, and then turns 
to Max: "Perhaps you have heard my name. I am Tannen- 
baum, a writer," and with this introduction he tenders Max 
a marble-white hand. In the following quiet, each lost in 
thinking, Max, of a sudden, becomes conscious of the fact that 
he has not answered the stranger. 

"Akh, excuse me, I am glad to make your acquaintance; and, 
although I do not know you — yet — ■." Tannenbaum watches 
the slow aimless gyrations of a few specks of coffee grounds 
swimming on the surface of his cup, and then both, as if by a 
common motive, lift up their eyes, and fix their gaze upon each 
other, deep and penetrating, yet with tactful hesitancy, as if 
in doubt as to who should speak first. 

"Are you a Russian from Kieff?" asks Tannenbaum with a 
note of profound secrecy. And, without waiting for an an- 
swer, he proceeds: "You look very much like a friend of mine 
in Kieff." "Yes, that is quite possible," replies Max; "I am 
a Russian from Kieff." They smoke in silence, and then the 
poet says again: "My company seems not to be pleasant to 
you. You look very much distressed" Max rejoins: "To the 
contrary: I have a feeling that we simply had to meet. We 
are both bound up together in some way. Is it not so?" In- 
tently he gazes upon the black eyes of the writer from which 
an ice-cold shaft seems to penetrate his innermost being. 

Tannenbaum reaches into his breast-pocket and withdraws 



Autumn Leaves 21 

a picture of his friend, Isidor Blochmann of Kieff, silently 
handing it over to Max, who, looking upon it with astonished 
interest, exclaims: "Strange, indeed, he really resembles me. 

But he is a jew, while I am a ." "Ah, that is just it! 

Shall I tell you?" "Yes, please; if it is not too hard on you. 
But there is too much noise here. Let us, rather, go to the 
park, if it is convenient." "Certainly! Let us go!" 

They pay, step out into the street, and walk to the park. 
There they sit down upon a bench, in the dim light of a lan- 
tern. Max is rilled with dread, and with curiosity to hear the 
story of the stranger. Tannenbaum begins to unravel the 
thread of the deep mystery that has devoured his heart all 
these years; ever since the progrom. 

"Before I begin my tale, I want you to know that I am of 
the belief that you are the son of my friend, Isidor Bloch- 
mann." "What are you talking about? I am a Russian! — A 
Christian!" Max is filled with the restlessness of a bird before 
a coming storm. 

"Then listen to me as calmly as you can. In September 

18 ." "The year of my birth!" interrupts him Max. "You 

see then already how everything pours itself in the glass!" 
With a sigh he continues: "A year of stormy times. Many 
mad winds swept then over Russia. The mob suffered of hun- 
ger. The nagaikas had done their cruel work; the swords cut 
human flesh like cabbages! And the Jew! — Akh, you don't 
know!" He covers his face with both hands. "I have been 
through it myself, and, akh, it is hard to have to live on after 
such an experience." He weeps. Max puffs feverishly at his 
cigarette. "On the fourth of September, the well known mob, 
armed with clubs and rocks, iron-bars and hatchets swept 
through the Ghetto, leaving behind death and destruction, fire 
and scattered feathers." He stops, and immobile they sit, 
wrapped in silence. 

"I was then in the house of my friend. It was toward even- 
ing. A steady rain drizzled down, and our hearts were filled 
with a heavy foreboding. Myself, he and his beloved wife, 
both intelligent, peaceable beings. She prepared the table for 
supper, and I played with the twins, a little girl and a boy He 
sat at his table, a watchmaker. Suddenly a great outcry arose 
from the street: "Kill the accursed of the Lord!" Trembling- 
fear seized us. I reached for my hat. They did not want to let 
me go. But I talked it over with them, and quieted their fears 
with the remark that I was going to go to the police station 
where I had a personal friend. 

"Hardly was I only a few steps from their house, when a 
brick came in my direction, followed by a veritable rain of 
rocks. I began to run for my life, passing thus several blocks, 
all the while struck by blows. The last one I felt on my head. 
It made me dizzy. I fell . 

"When I regained my consciousness, it was late in the even 
ing. My first thoughts were for Blochmann. 1 dragged my- 
self painfully back to the house, and as 1 drew near, I saw a 
tall human shape with a lantern, carrying something awa\ 



22 Autumn Leaves 

A Cossack on horseback loomed up suddenly, and I withdrew 
in a corner. But I heard the crying of a child. Oh, that I had 
had strength, at that time! 

"Finally the coast was clear nad I moved up to the entrance 
of the house. The dim light of a street-lantern filtered in; and 
— oh! — what a sad picture! — More I do not remember,— and 
then, again, I felt being carried long, — oh! so long and far" 

The poet becomes silent, and seems to listen to the weeping 
of his own heart. 

* * * 

Max sits there, listless, stupefied, — onlv his imagination is 
feeblv at work. fluttering- on shattered and bleeding wings far 
back into the land of remembrance. Half forgotten memories 
are lightning up in him, in a clearness not calling for crude 
facts Picture after picture comes, and fades aeram, before 
his inner eyes. Like a flash his ears hear agam the voice of 
Nicolai Ivajvch fall out: "D 1 'rtv Blochmann, a Yiddish good- 
for-nothing!" "Oh! — Is it that?" he mutters. And had not old 
W^nia told h i 'm that A^.hurka had been bought from a prince? 
"Ah! — what am I thinking about! Am I not a Russian?" But 
the resistless, merciless current of thonp-hts drags him alone. 
a mere chip Q f wood in the gn'n o^ a rapid torrent. In his head 
he feels the shock of a deep fall: "Then I am Blochmann — me! 
— me!' — me!!! — Blochmann! — and mv wife is mv own sifter! 
— Oh God! — I am losing my reason. — No — how could that be!" 

He rises heavilv to his feet, panting, and casting sinister 
looks unon Tannenhaum. The poet is thorou°"hJv frightened, 
and tries to calm him, terror and entreatv in his evps But 
Max is filled with an irresi\s+ ; Me ^* 9v, 'n? to lacerate and tfiro f+ 1e 
the man. with a th i 'rst for blood like a beast of nrev He 
throws Jrmself upon the frantic poet, gr ; ns his throat, and 
shakes him until white foam issues from the lips of both. 

"T — am Blochmann? — I — the father of mv own sisters child? 

— Ha — ha — ha! — me! " and he gets a firmer st r anode-hold 

cf h i# s victim. The incoherent -s^niitincs of Max bring some 
pedestrians to the scene, who pull him from the poet in which 
stnip-p-1^ he tears their clothes almost to shreds, in sunerhuman 
strength born of desnair. and then the voune men lead him to 
the bench, holding him there in a sitting position. 

Tannenbaum regains his consciousness, and looks down upon 
Max, who is nearly exhausted. A flood of tears flows from 
his eyes. "Shall we call a cop?" one of the young men asks 
him. "No! — no, please!" "But look at our clothes! Who 
is to pav for that?" The poet reaches into his breast-pocket, 
and pulls out some bills, which he hands them, together with 
his card, remarking: "Take this, and if it should not be enough, 
come to my address, and I will settle with you. But now, 
please, leave us alone." 

As the young men walk off, one remarks to his companion: 
"I guess it is some love affair!" The other shakes his head in 
doubt: "I don't know.— I don't like the whole affair" They 
turn about with suspicion, muster the two critically from head 



Autumn Leaves 23 

to foot, look into each other eyes, laugh up aloud, and resume 
their walk. 

Max finds himself again, with an acute pain in his heart 
which penetrates deeper and ever deeper. His weeping is not 
human, a series ot pamiui sounds issuing from his innermost 
being like tne sougiiing of a wind, or souls torn into shreds. 
Tannenbaum feels Gehenna opened before him, that part of 
the place of eternal torment where all the oppressed weep, 
and the deeply mortified. 

The plaintive ululations of pain float upon velvet-wings 
through the park, filling every nook with the unutterable 
tragedy of the life of a man. rrom these sounds blows an icy 
breath over the warm life of loving couples in the park, and 
they get up, and flee to the entrance as if hounded by jackals. 
Tannenbaum presses his temples with both hands. Max rises 
of a sudden and disappears in the shrubbery. l H or a moment 
there is appressive silence. The poet strains his ears to listen, 
and when, from a distance, again come the sounds of grief of 
the stricken man, Tannenbaum can not stand it any longer, 
and with outstretched hands of a hopeless appeal for help he 
hastens toward the entrance. For an instant he halts, pressing 
both fists to the sides of his head and then again he stumbles 
on with helplessly uplifted arms. 

Esther sits restless in a rocking-chair, her ears all the time 
listening for steps upon the stairway. "He does not come! — 
Why don't he come.' — When will he come?" She turns down 
the gasrtame a little, and sinks again into her seat. The woman 
in her surrenders to tears in an indefinite, depressing presenti- 
ment. 

* * * 

At the outskirts of the park Tannenbaum halts to gather new 
strength. Who knows with what thoughts his looks fathom 
the starry sky? Only now, after all is passed, he begins to 
realize the deep pain racking his body and soul. He presses 
his heart with a sigh. "Oi!" — comes the plaint of his race 
from his lips, as he looks up to heaven. "No answer from 
there! no answer comes! — "Oh, carry me on, my tired feet!" 
And they move, in obedience to his call, on through the night, 
on through the vaguely lit streets, while his soul is steeped in 
a stupor of exhaustion. His ghost-like silent peregrination dis- 
turbs only a few cats prowling over garbage-cans. 

Near midnight it is when he arrives at the corner of Fifth 
Avenue and Fiftieth Street, and leans against a wall, all tired 
out. He looks back upon the park with the bewildered ex- 
pression of one lost in a forest, and his ears strain to listen, 
as if for the voice of some bird, to guide him back to the lost 
path leading through the wilderness. Only far different sounds 
reach his ears. From the environing city-blocks, clear as sil- 
ver-bells, chime the voices of early newsboys, in their struggle 
for coppers, nickels and dimes calling out: "Morning paper, 
Sir!" The vague, monotonous chant for elusive pennies echoes 
and re-echoes in gentle sound-waves that benumb the poet's 



24 Autumn Leaves 

senses like with wavelets of tepid water, that almost coax him 
to fall asleep standing. An approaching automobile, though, 
rouses him. 

The machine is fully lighted, and rushes up like a meteor of 
metropolitan life. With a heavy thud it swerves into the field 
of vision, its front-wheels passing the curbing, some thirty feet 
from Tannenbaum, and four young people in the gorgeous 
vehicle hilariously welcome the young day; or are they only 
followers of the night, left behind? Who can tell? 

Upon a canvas-table, inside of the car, scintillate glasses with 
red wine, like blood and rubies, in the electric light. The 
chauffeur in the front seat has also no complaint coming, ex- 
cept, maybe, that his life is aimless, an empty bubble, which 
he does not know, and which is unknown alike to his passen- 
gers, who, in that respect, are in the same boat with him. 

The curtains of the windows of the machine are lowered, but 
again and again they roll up, disobedient to man in his sullied 
condition. Fragments of sordid, drunken discourse reach the 

poet's ears: "Don't, Jack!— You are tearing my Ah! let go, 

that's " "Shut up, you tin Lizz'!" This banal bit of reality 

brings the poet back to earth, and the loathing of it urges him 
on, and again he passes on, slowly, in the direction of the city. 

* * * 

It is full day now, and in his progress Tannenbaum almost 
collides with a group of women standing in the street, in front 
of a house. His sensitive ears pick up a few words of the con- 
versation: "He has not come home yet ." "How will she 

be able to stand it ." "She is so delicate of health." The 

poet, all of sudden, realizes the heavy task as yet ahead of him. 
Without asking any questions he walks up to the steps of the 
house, leaving the rest to his intuition. At the right door he 
halts. As he grips his heart with one hand, he lifts up the 
other to knock for admission. But, like the tremulously flut- 
tering wings of a tired bird, the trembling fingers sink, and 
end in resting heavy upon the door-knob, in need of support. 
He gathers himself, and straightens up, yet not relinquishing 
his hold; the door opens with the effort, and in the opening he 
stands bewildered. Attracted by the noise Esther enters from 
the adjoining room; yet at the discovery of the stranger she 
shrinks back, retreats, and leans heavily, with both hands and 
her back, against the table. 

Yes, recognition dawns upon her. It is the man whom Max 
had met upon the street-car. Deadly terror appeals mutely 
from her eyes, while, unable to struggle for words, her fea- 
tures twitch and tremble. 

The poet sways upon his feet under the strain of the emo- 
tions; cold sweat drips from his forehead; his eyes look list- 
less before him; tired out to the last spark of his life he stands 
before her with sad entreaty. He makes an effort to meet her 
glance; — the farniliar traits of his unfortunate friend in her 
features come to his consciousness with the intensity of pin- 
pricks of living fire. 



Autumn Leaves 25 

Esther senses the impending menace bound-up with the com- 
ing of that man, but she is powerless to do anything to avert 
it, like a person dreaming of approaching danger, yet unable 
to escape the grip of the nightmare. The child in the corner 
becomes restless, and its cries act as a sedative upon her 
nerves. She feels drawn to the cradle but fails in her strength. 

"Who are you?" she manages to utter in the end, after a 
protracted silent struggle. "I bring you bad news, my child. 
Be strong!" His head sinks upon his breast, the hat falls upon 
the ground, revealing the motley gray hair of the poet. With 
tears in her eyes she clinches both fists, impatiently mutter- 
ing: "I know — I know!" and she bends forward in surrender, 
and bends toward the old man, with the plaintive pleading: 
"Where is Max?" No answer comes from the lowered head. 
Again she asks the stranger: "Where is Max?" She bends her 
knees, in frantic supplication gripping the coat of the venerable 
man: "Max! — Max! — where is he?" Oh, how hard is life for 
him, as he looks down into her tear-stained eyes! "Not yet — 
not yet, my child. As yet I can not tell you." With a still 
firmer grip she holds on to the old man: "Oh, please, tell me 
the worst now; if you don't I shall lose my reason!" 

In vain she searches his eyes, and tries to fathom the depth 
of his soul, — there is no response. "I simply can not, my child. 
He lives; — more I cannot tell now." With these words his 
body trembles like a stricken oak of the forest, and dawn he 
sinks in a merciful faint, in front of her who is herself barely 
conscious of her own existence. 

*" * * 

Three months later we, again, lift the curtain, upon a large, 
scantily furnished room right under the roof. A cradle, a few 
pieces of furniture, a little stove, an improvised table, upon 
which are spread, without order, a score of books and of good 
many writing tablets. Does she write? A night-lamp flickers 
upon the window-sill. In the shadow sits Esther, rocking her- 
self mechanically, the sad face towards the window. 

A little white dog lays at her feet and looks up to her. The 
sadness of the mistress seems to overcast equally the faithful 
soul of the dumb creature. As soon as it feels the coming of 
a rainstorm it runs down into the yard, and howls heart- 
rendingly, for which performance the neighbors bombard the 
distressed creature with what they just can lay hands on. 
Many peoples as yet, believe in evil spirits. 

Esther has become thought personified, a thought working 
with the speed of lightning, and, permeating with this thought 
the entire cosmos, she writes verses, polished pearls, for which 
a literary parasite throws her a meagre income. A genuine 
Praying-Mantis, with neither nose or forehead of any amount, 
dressed like a slobby literate, with a bat's eyes, and a smile, 
sweet as castor-oil. 

Tannenbaum comes to see her often, he plays with the child, 
gathers her scattered poetry, and writes at the bottom of eacli 
the words: ". . . The mother — of my brother's . . ." 



26 Autumn Leaves 

At every sound upon the stairs she starts up and listens — , 
listens — . 

Autumn, — yellow leaves are fluttering to the ground, and 
with them a new passion fills her sick soul. On rainy days she 
likes, now, to leave her child with a neighbor, — a good-natured, 
dned-up English woman, with a bosom as desolate and dry as 
the Sahara; but a good soul at all that. 

Esther then thfows a shawl over her shoulders and walks 
through the hazy, empty streets, followed by the faithful, little 
dog,— and always she braces the wind. The stronger the storm 
blows into her face, and whips her body, the more it seems to 
be to her heart's content. Her lips move as in a prayer: 
"Blow! — Blow! dear winds! Oh stronger! — still more; one 
pain benumbs another!" And with a tervor of intensity she 
breasts the storm-winds. 

But for this outburst of passion she has to pay a heavy price. 
When she returns home, she is all broken, — a mere feather 
whirled on by the slightest breeze. Like an irridescent, deli- 
cate soap-bubble she sinks upon her bed, and then she is rocked 
with fever, anxiously watched, and cared-for, by Tannenbaum, 
whom the scared English Miss has called, as she .is wont to 
m such cases. 

Night has come upon its velvet wings; it is past eleven 
o'clock before Esther wakens, and she notices at her bedside 
the poet, his head bowed in thought. With feverish, feeble 
fingers she touches his hand, and he trembles at this contact. 
"Do you feel better?" he asks, like a father, thoughtful for a 
sick child, entrusted to his care. She keeps silent, and looks 
about her with questioning e}^es. "What do you want, Esther?" 
She fixes her eyes upon h.m with an expression that causes 
him to shudder. Raising herself to a half upright position she 
bends toward him with the mien of one about to reveal a secret, 
and, catching up with her, as yet, masked question, he inclines 
his head to be ready for her call. 

"Do you know where Max is?" she whispers into his ear. 
"No my daughter; I do not know." He feels her almost 
scorching breath come nearer to his face. "Do you want to 
know where he is?" she asks again. "Yes, child, tell me!" 
"So I shall, but you must not tell it to anyone else. He is just 
fixing up the sky." The poet painfully closes his eyes, while 
she continues: "And do you know what he'll do after that? — 
He is going to trim the whiskers of the old Gods. And when 
they don't let him, he throws them down upon our earth where 
they are turned into human beings." 

"You are sick, my child. Lay down and rest yourself. Do 
you want a glass of milk?" Good old Tannenbaum gently 
caresses her feverish brow, and she withdraws, offended like a 
child. 

"Do you want to listen to me?" she resumes. "Yes, I will" 
"He has begged me to join him in Heaven." The venerable 
poet looks her mildly, but firmly, into the eyes, in an endeavor 



'Autumn Leaves 27 

to help her concentrate upon a clear and distinct thought. And 
to a certain degree he succeeds, after a silent, battle of souls. 
His is the stronger. In an awakening half-consciousness she 
begins to cry, and sobs out the plea: "Perhaps you know where 
he is?" Whereupon he replies: "No, but I shall go and look 
for him " "Good!" she exclaims, with the impulsive gladness 
of a child clapping her hands in eager approval. "When will 
you start out?" "As soon as you are asleep like a good little 
woman." Now she gives in and sinks back upon her pillow, 
closing her eyes. 

At that moment the door opens silently, and in the aperture 
appears a funny' head with a richness of many paper rolls, with 
scant hairs entwined around them. It is the dried-up, but 
correspondingly good-hearted, Miss from the British isles, cast- 
ing an inquiring look upon Esther and the good old man watch- 
ing over her. Upon a signal of the poet she enters on tip-toe 
to go about needed work in the room, while Tannenbaum, with 
a parting glance upon the sleeper, goes upon his painful 
errand. 

Merely seen from the outside the Bowery lives in the night as 
well as in the day, but at closer view it appears to be more 
quiet. He who is the glorious possessor of a dime, has but to 
step in to get a chance to sleep like a "Kaiser before the war." 
And he whose nose is a little obstructed in its passages, can 
manage even to sleep like a very God. The usually rotten 
mattress does not matter to the tired human derelict; and, on 
the other side, the gray, slimy and dirty walls care even less 
for the ever changing, and, at bottom, ever selfsame inmates : — 
they are used to the broken lives to whom they give shelter 
through the sombre nights. 

Through most of the night Tannenbaum makes the weary 
round from dingy and cobwebbed caravanserai to glaringly-lit 
plaster-cast imitation-marble-palace, from rooming house to 
hotel, in the ever waning hope to find Max. Ceaselessly he 
wanders on, more depressed after each futile search. 

In one of the palaces visited upon his errand he disturbs a 
man absorbed in an altruistic act of self-impfovement; viz: 
trying to generously bestow upon a sleeping neighbor his own 
dilapidated shoes in exchange for that fellow's less torn foot- 
wear. 

To the left of Tannenbaum an elderly man with a very much 
wrinkled face talks in his sleep: — "Ah! — they stole it! — they 
stole it! — they stole my patent! — Run! the city is on fire, — the 

whole city is in flames! Ah! my patent was so good: I 

am a genius — ha! — ha! — ha — Those thieves! — They wrecked 
my life! — Run! run! — for all your life is worth! Run! my 
friends! — the city is on fire — Fire! Fire!" and he wakes from 
his own hollering, only to meet Tannenbaum's passing glance. 
Now the fully awakened dreamer continues to a different tune. 
"Do you have some loose change, Sir? Give me enough for a 
cup of coffee." The poet hands him a few small coins, which 
the other fellow receives with thanks, tucks away into a ragged 



28 Autumn Leaves 

vest pocket, only to roll back on his cot to continue his dreams 
of shattered prosperity, intermingled with arson. 

Tannenbaum turns to go, and, in passing on, brushes against 
the back of a chair, at a round table, near the entrance, at 
which a number of, what Gorky would call: "Creatures that 
once were men," are engaged in a game of cards. The man in 
the seat turns about with a scowl, accepting the intruder's 
polite apology with an insolent stare: and the shiftless, or 
piercing, glances of the rest of the players follow the humbly, 
but cleanly, dressed old man with a scarcely concealed hos- 
tility, that fills the poet with loathing, utter disgust, and the 
realization of the hopelessness of his task. 

With bowed head he retraces his steps, — but stops no more — , 
to his distant two-room apartment, and there he sinks into his 
rocking-chair to rest his worn-out body from his strenuous 
peregrinations through the night. So utterly exhausted he is 
that he has not even removed his coat and hat. Dark shadows 
seem to pass over his brow, and his face assumes a terrible 
expression, as his eyes fall upon the dimly outlined clothes in 
the half opened closet. His tightly pressed lips slightly open, 
and almost inaudibly he mutters to himself: "What shall I 
do? How shall I go on living? I can not give life nor can I 
destroy it!" 

The reflection of the pictures in the morbid back-ground of 
his troubled brain seems to take on a shadowy form amongst 
the vaguely visible garments in the closet. And lo! it is Max 
incarnated, there, in a semi-luminous green suit. Ghostly 
pallid he proffers a shadow-hand with the dispairing question: 
"What have you done?" And the apparition vanishes again 
before an answer is given. "Hallucinations!" exclaims Tannen- 
baum, trying to get a grip upon himself and passes an im- 
patient hand over his forehead, half-heartedly adding: "I must 
be sick." Yet he has no power to rise and keeps his eyes 
riveted to the spot where only a moment before he had ap- 
parently seen the unfortunate son of his martyred friend of 
far away Russia. Is there no mercy for him? No end to the 
tortures of his soul? What has he done? 

The grey mists of early dawn are wafted through the open 
window into the half-opened clothes-closet, and they play an 
uncanny game with the folds and wrinkles of indistinctly vis- 
ible coats, and pants and hats, and as if touched by a magic 
wand they condense into a lovely, yet pitiful, roseate shape: — 
Esther; unutterable sadness in her eyes, and from the tremu- 
lous lips again the hardly audible question: "What have you 
done?" the question he can not answer, and no one else can, 
and with the first ray of the morning sun the vision vanishes 
like the first. 

"What have I done?" the poet asks himself, wringing his 
hands in bitter despair. He looks up, his eyes meet the clock 
on the wall, and its tick-tack seems to take up the unceasing 
question of his tormented soul: "What have I done? — What 
could I have done?" The tick-tack of inexorable accusation of 
the soulless, merciless, clock drives him almost to madness. 



Autumn Leaves 29 

And under its spur he rises of a sudden, and seats himself at 
his tabie to write; but more than the words: "What could I 
have doner' he can not put down, as a tremor seizes his hands. 
In sudden resolution Tannenbaum gets up, turns oil the gas 
flame that has been flickering all the time, steps out in the still 
daricened hallway, closing tne door behind him, and starts to 
waik down-stairs, but alter a tew steps he halts irresolutely, 
lets himself down upon a step, resigned, and looks up, pensive- 
ly, into the pale bluisn Hame of tne gas-jet above the stair-way. 
Limp hang the hands over his knees; — thm, long, white marble- 
hands. Krtortless, and powerless, the unusually long, slender 
tapering fingers seem to droop like tired petals of a ilower, and 
in their lifeiessness they express the mental condition to their 
owner. "What could 1 have done.'" — these hands seem to say 
in helpless, and hopeless, query, and the same helplessness, and 
hopelessness, seems to emanate trom his dejected teatures. His 
entire being has no answer to the simple and yet so momentous 
question. And you humans, so full of earthly wisdom, have 
you any answer to give? I wonder! 

* * * 

With curses upon his lips Max wanders about, in ragged 
clothes. His heart is chilled, and over his forehead hover dark 
clouds. Tne human beings ne snuns, and they avoid him like 
a plague. And when he feels, instinctively, that, perhaps, some- 
one stands still to look after him, he turns around as quick as a 
cornered beast, and utters blasphemies, — words like drops of 
poison: "Idiots! — Hypocrites! — Weaklings! — Dirty liars! — 
Parasites!" 

The face with the hollow cheeks and protruding chin de- 
fiantly stretched forward, with eyes piercing like lances; upon 
the head the remnants of what was once a hat, under which 
protrude dirty strands of long hair; the face unshaven, — one 
side of the beard snorter than the other; — who trimmed it? 
From one shoe escapes a dirty toe. The pants flop and flutter 
against the wind, old and dilapidated. Around the waist is 
wrapped a strip of canvas, long enough to encircle twice the 
emaciated body. Higher up some remains pose as a shirt, ex- 
posing, in places, the unwashed, bony chest. The coat has no 
buttons, but, to make up for the loss, plenty of holes. One 
sleeve is torn off. Under the arm he carries a small package, 
which, at nightfall, serves him for a pillow. 

Night falls with its shadows. The heaven is covered with 
black clouds. Eleven o'clock, and the noises of the world have 
died down to stillness. Suspended street-lanterns flicker hope- 
lessly; moved by the wind and rain, they swing, and with them, 
round and about, vibrate objects of darkness. 

On a corner Max rests against a lamp-post, the soaked body 
pressed against the pole. Over his face drops of moisture 
trickle down to his wet throat and breast. His tired eyes look 
into the dark distance. 

Some twenty feet from him, at the door of a store, stands the 
officer of the beat. Their eyes meet with mutual unfriendliness, 
and gladly avoid each other. Max takes the hint; — on he moves 



30 Autumn Leaves 

again, his ripped-up footwear leaving the pavement with 
gurghng splasnes. A gaunt spectre, his shadow is cast upon 
trie we i, smiling sidewalk, now it shrinks, a misshapen dwarf, 
and now agam, it spreads, a gigantx phantom; at last it 
dwindles to a mere nothing, to disappear with its owner in a 
hall-door. The unfortunate man crawls upon some rolled-up 
carpets under the staircase.— "olumber, tired wanderer!" 

* * * 

Morning dawns. The janitor, an elderly, thick lipped, col- 
ored man, stealthily comes downstairs, stretching himself like 
a cat. He looks out of the door, blinking into the early sun- 
shine, — broom in hand. Then he turns, and walks towards the 
pile of carpets, upon which Max is sleeping, his knees drawn 
up to his chin. In the semi-darkness the janitor prods the 
huddled heap with his investigating broom, and terror seizes 
him when the indistinct, gray form comes to life. 

First he sees revealed the half of a face, which then turns to 
meet him in full. The thoroughly awakened sleeper looks 
about, and then rises to his feet, the janitor mustering him with 
hostile eyes. Casting a look upon the disarranged carpets the 
colored man exclaims: "What — the hell! — Say, man! — What 
have you done to the rugs, man?" 

Max rubs his face, consigns the janitor to the everlastingly 
hot place, and walks towards the door. The janitor bars his 
way, looking for some kind of satisfaction, which Max is un- 
willing to give, and they come almost to blows. But steps are 
heard on the stairs, as the colored man stands with uplifted 
broom-handle. He remains in that position, motionless, look- 
ing up to see who might be coming. 

A woman descends, and in her we recognize Sorka Fein- 
berg. She looks questioningly from one to the other. 
Through the brain of Max flashes fully conscious recognition, 
when the janitor breaks in: "L,ook, lady, this poor white trash 
of a dog has spoiled all my rugs!" "If I am a dog, I shall bite 
off your ear!" retorts Max, with a step forward "Go away, 
John!" the woman calls out. The janitor steps aside, and she 
louivs fun into tae naggard lace of the other man, her eyes be- 
coming wider and wider in horrified recognition as she shrieks: 
"Oh, Maxim!" "That is me! — What about it?" Max snaps 
back, and his features assume such an expression of the sar- 
casm of despair, that she has to hold on to the bannister to 
keep from falling. 

Max brushes the janitor aside, and walks out into the street, 
Sorka staring after him, near a collapse. Her pocketbook slips 
from the twitching fingers. The colored man picks it up and 
hands it back to her. A fifty cent piece makes the acquaint- 
ance of his vestpocket. She stands with bowed head, in tears. 
The janitor is quite embarrassed and at a loss what to do. 
Finally he rushes out, and across the street, where her father 
conducts a butcher-shop; and there he looks through the 
window. 

A couple of women stand at the counter, fingering over the 
goods with inquisitive hands. One of them picks some tripe 



Autumn Leaves 31 

from a platter, and begins to measure to her elbow, how many 
yards she might need for her household Another looks deep 
into the eyes of a calf's head, and takes offence at the out- 
stretched tongue. 

Mr. Feinberg is cutting some meat, and issues stentorian 
command to his helper, who sits next to the ice box, in blood- 
stained garments, plucking a chicken, yawning, and occasional- 
ly, scratching himself vigorously by all means imaginable, kick- 
ing from himself, as far as possible, a pile of still unplucked 
fowl, — a desperate situation for a Jewish butcherboy, of whom 
the chicken-lice are very fond. 

From a railing, in front of the counter, lungs, livers, and the 
like, are suspended from hooks, and thick drops of blood drip, 
unnoticed, upon heads and shoulders of the haggling women. 

Mr. Feinberg, a man of unclassic features, in a blood-stained 
coat and apron, round as a barrel. Upon a powerful, massive 
neck reposes a head, naturally with no evidence of brain, adorned 
with a black beard, a pronounced, fleshy nose, thick sausage- 
lips, jackass-ears, high pointed, pyramid-shaped forehead, and 
eyes — ah! eyes! — To paint them I should have to take a brush! 
— But now the possessor of all these charms move's, reaches 
with one hand in his bosom for a snuff-box, stuffs his nose with 
tobacco, but does not sneeze, merely wiping his nose with a 
bloody end of the apron. 

The janitor raps on the window. Mr. Feinberg excuses him- 
self to the customers, with a winning smile. In passing he 
wakes his help with a shout from a momentary, back-scratch- 
. ing siesta, and walks to the door. After a few remarks whis- 
pered into his ear, he hurries across the street, followed by the 
janitor. 

* * * 

Every city has some park or square frequented by its home- 
less. There our hero, at times, drags himself and sits down 
at the side of other human derelicts and types. 

To the left of him is a social outcast, with a bloated face, up- 
lifted to the sun, the lips half-opened in delight, displaying a 
cavern with a protruding, lone yellow-hued tooth Some forty 
years old she is, with a hat, the shape of an old umbrella, turned 
sideways. The shoes are half unbuttoned. A pocketbook 
wound up tight with a cord, and of the size, a~d vab i e, of the 
bat, a grotesque, d'rty shawl over the shoulders. The skirt 
black, fringed, and torn, in parts, and a waist — ah! enough! 
The bosom heaves in deep waves over a trembling heart, and 
it heaves, and heaves! 

To his right a man stretched out in comfort, some 35 years 
old, with a flat nose like a gander, a cap pulled down over his 
eyes. He sings, and snaps his fingers, to keep time. Maybe 
a member of the grand army of the down-ana-outs. 

Next to him we see another type of much interest. Dressed 
in accord with an art of his own: red pants, brown canvas 
shoes, three waists, — one on top of the other — , white gloves; 
in regal majesty one hand resting upon a cane. The face I do 



32 Autumn Leaves 

not dare to paint, because it is God's masterpiece; — picture 
yourself a bulldogs likeness, or whatever you may choose in 
its place. 

The law does not make allowance for all-to-much freedom; 
and a cop must earn his living with hard toil. "Come on! get 
up, you lazy beggars!" Unwillingly they arise, only to drop 
into their seats, again, after the majesty of the law has passed 
out of sight. 

* * * 

Some good day a gift is about to descend upon L,os Angeles. 
Somewhere in California a freight train slows down its speed 
to take in water for the engine. From under a car issues a 
pair of feet, followed by other parts of the anatomy of Max. 
He keeps close to the ground, in eternal vigilance, to see if the 
path is free, and then he disappears, with turtive, quick steps. 
vVide and free are the highways of California; aimlessly wan- 
dering he moves on over the road leading to Palm Springs. 

* * * 

Another star has fallen. On a winter-evening we see Sorka 
stand under a window, wrapped in a thin Spring-coat. The 
wind angrily whirls about the snow. But she is deaf to its 
voice. A stranger, she stands, at a strange house, listening 
to some piano-playing. Inside it is warm, and she feels her 
heart-strings drawn to it. A hand reaches up> at the other side 
of the window, and pulls down the shade. 

The cold drives her on. In the next block she halts in front 
of a bakery. The warmth, and the fragrant breath of fresh- 
baked bread hold her with a mighty pull. She is about to step 
in, fascinated by the frozen vapors oscillating at the door. But 
she remembers that she has not a cent to her name, and she 
passes on. 

In the narrow path, plowed by human bodies through the 
high snowdrifts on the sidewalk, she collides with a man, at 
the next street-corner He stops, as her pale face with its 
feverishly luminant eyes pleases him; and he looks her over 
from top to bottom, like an article for sale. A man, — cold and 
white like the frost, though dressed warm in an expensive fur- 
coat. Only one little spark holds him in touch with life: — ■ 
woman. He takes her by the arm: "Come, and go with me. 
There it will be warm; and we will make hot chocolate." She 
looks up into his bloodless face. The snowflakes fall thicker. 

In the dim light of a lantern, across the street, a phantom- 
like shadow of a man approaches, indistinct. All that is dis- 
cernible is a white shawl, folded around his neck. As he comes 
to the lantern an impulse commands him to stand still, like 
rooted to the ground. The pensive sad face of a youth gazes 
into the direction of the two, — gazes and gazes, — until the two 
receding shadows, linked close together, are swallowed by the 
night. 

A back-door opens in the morning. Unceremoniously Sorka 
is pushed out into the white, cold, glittering world. A glad 
winter-sun gilds her agonized features. With one hand she 
presses her heaving bosom, the other is closed tfeht over some 



Autumn Leaves 33 

dollar-bills: — they mean food and shelter to her; — but at what 
a price? 

A farmer in California, on the way home from a small town 
with a truck-load of provisions, notices, in the field of vision 
of the searchlight of his car, a dark spot at the road side. He 
stops his machine, and walks cautiously up to the curbing, 
where Max is sitting, famished and tired out. 

"Where are you bound for, stranger?" "I am bound for 
the jungle." "Why? Are you a believer in nature?" "I don't 
believe in anything!" And he follows up the angry retort with 
curses. The farmer steps back frightened. "Who broke your 
heart, poor stranger?" Max jumps to his feet: "I don't want 
your pity! — Do you hear? — Go to the Devil!" An indistinct 
object in his uplifted hand, he walks up to the farmer, menac- 
ing, who rushes back to his machine, and is off in a minute. 
The tall, gaunt, threatening shadow is left alone, at the road- 
side. Night! — Sleep! — sleep! tired wanderer, somewhere under 
a tree. 

Over the snow-capped mountains rises the morning sun, 
floods the world with a purple tint, and lights with it, also, 
upon the poor bundle of bones dressed in rags, advancing 
painfully. Exhausted, hardly alive, he plods over the dusty 
road, on, and ever on. 

After many days of hunger, his lips parched with heat and 
thirst, he arrives in Palm Springs. He drags himself through 
the main street, which is the length of only a few blocks. A 
few grocery stores, a machine shop, a number of hotels, here 
and there, on both sides of the road, tents, and little wooden 
houses. Many tourists are in evidence, and they, with the 
home folk, and some Indians, constitute the inhabitants of 
the Valley of the Mockingbirds, cozily spread between the 
mountains, famous for its healing Sulphur Springs, and also, 
for its canyon, where the hermit lives. 

As Max drags himself on, distrustful looks follow him from 
windows and porches. In the front of Loeran's grocery, — the 
favorite hang-out of the local "respectable" idlers, — we see 
some of them sit or stand around, warming themselves in the 
sun like chickens. When he gets here he makes a halt, — 
willingless and unthinking, — in that condition of mind in 
which neither walking nor standing matters, as the strength 
for either is utterly spent. 

"Who are you?" asks Demuth, a German carpenter, which 
question elicits no answer. Another asks him: "Who are 
you, stranger? What are you looking for? You look as if 
you had wandered a long way!" Instead of an answer the 
interrogated unfortunate man begins to sag and sway like a 
cornstalk in the wind and, unable to stand it any longer, the 
weary body collapses slowly on the spot. Huddled on the 
ground, Max rubs his face with a grimy hand and stares up 
helpless into the faces of the questioners. 

An Indian drives by with a load of rocks. He beats his 
donkey with a whip, cunningly so that a glancing blow curls 



34 Autumn Leaves 

also over the back of Max. All break out in laughter, except 
Demuth, who is 35 years old, a man of feeling, and who grits 
his teeth over the heartlessness of the Ind.an. With de- 
spising contempt he looks over all present. Then he turns 
to Max. 

"Why did you take that?" The unfortunate man shrugs 
his shoulder, casts a helpless look around, and then admits: 
"I have no strength left, — the desert has sucked it all out of 
my bones." They search in each other's eyes with an under- 
standing sympathy, two souls recognizing each other. "Can 
you get up? — Shall I help you?" Max nods consent. "Yes, 

help me! 1 am stiff all over." Demuth bends down, and 

helpfully lifting him under his arms, he asks him: "Will you 
go with me?" To which query Max answers: "Take me 
anywhere, — all I want is sleep." 

He is led away, followed by many pairs of unfeeling eyes. 
They pass another grocery, further up the street, then the 
little church, and to the right we see Demuth's house, in the 
shade of tall pepper trees. Big piles of lumber are stacked at 
the side of the house and in the rear of the yard. In front we 
see a tame skunk and an equally domesticated squirrel. Two 
tiny, playful kittens alternately chase either of the two, but 
when separated by the chase, one of the felines raises a yowl 
of distress, until filled with a new courage, by the return of 
its pla}'mate, for a new raid upon the tamed creatures of the 
wild. 

To Max it is all a blank. His kind leader conducts him to 
a cot and mattress under the pepper tree right in back of the 
house, gently helps him down, and the unfortunate man sinks 
into the dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion. While the 
sleeper is thus wrapped in merciful oblivion, Demuth trims 
his beard and hair. 

An aged, mummy-like, wrinkled aboriginal appears in on 
the yard, picks out some pieces of wood from the scattered 
piles, walks up to the carpenter, but, instead of paying, he 
looks up to the sky with the words: "Tomorrow we will have 
a storm." Then he fastens a keen glance upon the sleeper, 
and up again to heaven, slowly repeating the words: "To- 
morrow we will have a storm." Not saying another word he 
walks off, — a man of but few words, if any, like all of his race. 

Now Demuth shaves the sleeper, who is steeped so deep in 
utter forgetfulness of self that even a cut in his cheeks could 
not have awakened him. His task accomplished, the carpen- 
ter leaves for the grocery. From there he issues with pack- 
ages and parcels of clothing and eatables for his new friend. 

The idle gossips on the porch are poking fun at him, "The 
Lord help you, Demuth, — you have a rich guest. Don't 
overfeed him with Swiss cheese, — you can't make a Dutch- 
man out of him anyways." He calls them all bags of emptj 
straw and resumes his way home, leaving the bunch con- 
vulsed with laughter over their imagined smartness. 

* * * 

On the following morning Max looks already different, — 



Autumn Leaves 35 

almost like his own previous self, only he bears the imprint 
of awefui surrenng. He sits at the window, watonng me 
palms waved by the wind, and above them a heaven over- 
hung with black clouds. And he mutters to himself: "A 
gray world! — When will there be light?" 

Demuth, in a little distance, kneels in front of a stove, which 
he feeds with wood-shavings. He looks up to his guest with 
the query: "Will we have a storm?" Max shivers and, with 
another look upon the overcast heaven, replies: "Yes — mad 
winds!" The carpenter looks upon him intently: "Hm! — 
mad winds! — A strange expression from your lips, — are you a 
poet — a writer?" Max sighs heavy, a bitter smile curling his 
lips for a moment, and then he is once more lost in his 
own self. 

Again his world of silent grief is invaded with the question: 
"Anyway, may I ask you what wind has brought you here?" 
Max looks around in silence, and meets a prodding flicker of 
distrust in the eyes of Demuth, a national heritage hard to 
overcome. With an acute pain our unfortunate man closes 
his eyes, Demuth catching himself in regret, remembering 
that cherries fall from the tree when ripe, and that one snouid 
not put coarse fingers into an open wound. The well-meaning 
carpenter suffers under his own tactless break, rises to his 
feet, puts on his coat, and, afraid to make another unwise 
step, he walks out of the room with a mumbled excuse that 
does hardly reach the ears oi : his guest. 

As soon as he is left alone Max looks around, distressed and 
disturbed over the good-natured, but too inquisitive German. 
The unrest of the Kussian drags at his heart, and pulis him 
irresistibly towards the door, he feebly resisting for a time. 
At last ne grabs a stick leaning agamsc the wan. A few pas- 
sers-by meet him, and good-intentionally ask: "Where are 
you going to, stranger r — JUook out! — A storm is approach- 
ing 1" buc on he treads, paying no attention to all queries. 

The road is covered with sand. In mad pranks the wind 
whins up dense clouds ot dust, announcing the coming grim 
p*ay ot naoire. A hash of hgmning divides the heavens, 
neavy single drops begin to fall. A tew wolves of the desert 
avoid his searching giances like guilty souis. He increases 
his speed, mou^n amness — and. purposeless. Ever dariter it 
becomes, thicKer the rain-drops, and lightning upon lightning 
crashes trom the firmament. The wind wrestles with gro- 
tesque, spmy cacti, and nowis over that pamiul occupation. 

rast, and wicked, the night descends. It rains in torrents. 
A mighty thunder-clap reverberates in the echoes of the can- 
yon. He abruptly halts, rooted on the spot, with bewildered 
looks into the surrounding chaos, and then he hurries on, ap- 
proaching, so to say, the unknown end of a tedious journey. 
Clad in gray and vapors of dampness, the mountains loom up 
like gigantic trolls. Heaven and desert melt into a unit of 
plaintive sadness, and the inner life of Max blends with it all 
into a tragic trinity of sacred sorrow. 

After urging on for a few miles, breasting the raging ele- 



36 Autumn Leaves 

ments, he sits down upon a rock, the eyes fixed upon the 
darkness before him. His lips move: "Whereunto are you 
hunting me, you mad winds? Throw me down, if you are 
stronger than I." He lowers his head upon one arm, hiding 
his face, shivering of cold and pain. Somewhat relieved he 
gets up again and wanders on and on. Once in a while the 
lightning reveals, for a ghastly instant, a few head of cattle, 
emaciated by the drouth, huddled together, while in the near 
distance flare up the green lights of the eyes of famished 
coyotes; or again crumbling, bleached bones are illuminated, 
the tribute collected by the arid gods of the parching desert. 

At a late hour he reaches, at the canyon's mouth, a dividing 
hill; from the slope of it he discerns the light issuing from 
the cabin of the hermit, and he stops for a moment at the 
unexpected sight. "Man everywhere, — even in the desert!" 
he exclaims in dismay and disgust, and is about to turn away, 
but in chafing obedience to an intuition he resumes his wan- 
dering. 

He halts at the cabin of the hermit, examines the little 
home built of palm-logs, and then sits down upon a rock, 
across from the entrance. Accords from a guitar reach him, 
and intently he gazes upon the dimly-lit latticed door, in 
search for the source of the melody. And then his eyes fol- 
low the path leading down into the canyon, in whose depth a 
rivulet hastens on with a resistless impetus, like a dying, faith- 
ful soul urging to confession. To this is added the Bachanal 
of the slashing and crashing of the palms. 

With a shudder he looks away and his eyes rest again upon 
the latticed door to the unknown hermit's retreat. "There 
lives a man who will not cause you pain," an internal voice 
calls to him repeatedly, almost audib^. "Flee from him!" a 
second voice interjects. "Disappear in the dark canyon. Na- 
ture may rage in wrath and terror; but she is frank and open, 
and honest, not dissimulating like man." 

A winding narrow trail leads into the canyon. He begins 
to give heed to the warning voice and is about to follow its 
advice. At that moment the door opens; a flood of light is- 
sues, dimly illuminating the stove and the dark human shape 
not far from it. A tremor seizes Max, and he blinks towards 
the open doorway, from which steps rapidly the lone inhabi- 
tant, the hermit, clad only in an abbreviated pair of coarse 
pants; rugged like a tree of the forest, hairy and bearded, of 
medium size, with a splendidly developed body; and there 
they stand, measuring each other with their eyes. 

"Who is there?" rings out a soft, melodious voice, but Max 
does not answer. "Who are you? Where do you come from 
and where are you going to?" "What do you ask for? Don't 
you know as yet, where man comes from, and what he is 
seeking?" "Yes, you are right, and my door is open to you." 
"That is not enough! — Open your heart!" It is open, don't 
you feel it? Thereupon is silence. Then they walk to tne cabin, 
to look upon each other in the light, and their hands meet in 
a firm grip. 



Autumn Leaves 37 

The hermft leads Max into his small, yet neatly and taste- 
fully appointed retreat. Entering you see a few shelves with 
books, a small stove; on the walls are picture and clippings, 
some instruments, specimens of Indian pottery, and a goodly 
number of curios, made from cacti and palmsticks, is in evi- 
dence everywhere. A small kerosene-lamp bathes all in a 
warm light. From a cross-beam dried apples and risps with 
palmseed are suspended. 

Max looks over his new friend thoroughly, and best he is 
impressed with the luminous, large, blue eyes; but from the 
marvelously chiseled, beautiful features occasionally issues 
a cold chill that repulses him. The hermit leads Max to the 
little bed, and assists him in getting off the wet clothes. While 
his host is thus occupied, the gaze of our wanderer rests upon 
i crystal in a velvet casing, in the center of the small table. 
He refreshes his body with some fruit, while the hermit mus- 
ters him with pity, with the sunken cheeks and mournful eyes. 
He begins to play and mild and soothing accords enwrap the 
lacerated, tired soul of Max, who stretches himself out upon 
the bed and falls in slumber. When the hermit finishes play- 
ing, his guest is fast asleep. The hermit remains, still and 
motionless. All through the night the blue eyes are fastened 
upon the sleeper. 

Esther fades away like a flower exhaling its delicate per- 
fume. The child grows up babbling little words, and crawls 
all over the dirty floor of the small room, under the super- 
vision of a mother who is unable to manage her own self 
except in the work of her pen. Tannenbaum has aged terri- 
bly; he is bent and gray. The child is his joy, and its tears 
are his own. He begins to talk over Esther to join him for 
California. She gives her consent with the attitude of a being 
that does not care where its coffin might rest in the end. 
Thus they make preparation for the journey. 

When the previously mentioned literarv parasite gets wind 
of it, he hurries to the spot, with his well-known portefeuille 
filled with creations not his own. His slippery tongue twists 
in the crooked mouth full of lies. The lips overflow of praise 
and best wishes, a genuine gusher of untruths. But all the 
while he remains true to his ghoulish profession, rubs nerv- 
ously his parched cheeks, and then tries to haggle down the 
price to be paid for her creations of verse, while he fingers 
the pages like scrap-paper. She gives him no answer and 
wearily turns away from him. 

Tannenbaum transacts with him the further sale. Our lit- 
erary "Mantis religiosa" musters up a ready-made sympathy 
for leave-taking, poetically kisses Esther's hand, and retreats 
to the door, with sounding, empty phrases. The Jewish poet 
looks upon him with loathing. A resolute light flares up in 
his eyes as he leads the blood- or rather brain-sucker out 
of the door. Once there, he gets a firm hold of his neck, 
hisses under his breath: "Once for all, let me settle accounts 
with you!" — gives him a splendid kick, and wishes a happy 
journey to the end of the stairs. 



38 Autumn Leaves 

On the following day the two health-and-peace-seeking 
people, with the little child, are on their way to the land of 
sunshine. 

* * * 

Max adapts himself to his hermit-life. He lets beard and 
hair grow untrimmed. Around the loins a piece of canvas, the 
rest of the body exposed to the air, well recuperated, and 
bronzed by the sun to a copper-hue. His time he spends to 
assist the hermit in the manufacture of curios for tourists. 
Straight palmsticks are the material used. Besides, he helps 
in washing cacti and drying them in the sunshine. Incidentally 
he is taught to play the guitar. In short, it is like two lives 
flowing into the same channel. 

At times the past surges up in his memory, and he weeps 
and curses, until the hermit pats him gently on head and 
shoulders, with glistening tears, and reaches for his instru- 
ment, with soothing music to giye peace to the troubled soul. 

The tourists are shunned by Max like death itself. Already, 
when he sees them come in the distance, he flees to the canyon, 
to keep away until they are gone. When his sharpened senses 
tell him that the air is free from the smells of smoke, tobacco, 
and ladies' perfumes and powders, he comes out of his hiding- 
place, breathing in the pure air deep through quivering nos- 
trils. Thus passes the time. 

* * * 

Imperturbably the hand of fate writes on, fulling the pages 
of time with the record of the grim play of destiny. The 
pilgrims in search of rest and health are led by its threads to 
Palm Springs, and they settle down in a little shingle-house 
nearby the road. Tannenbaum plays most of the time with 
the small child, listens to its babbling speech, and shakes his 
sorrowful head which perceives but obstacles in the path of 
life, with no way out, which makes it only worse. Esther 
passes her lifeless life in a little garden in the rear of the 
house, merely upheld, but not restored to health, by the glori- 
ous climate. 

Tannenbaum busies himself in the kitchen to make dinner 
ready. The little child is asleep. All preparations being made, 
the old man steps out in the garden in the rear of the house 
to call Esther. He sees her favorite seat vacant and finds 
her gone. With a puzzled mien he looks all over for her, and 
then goes to the front of the house, out into the road, look- 
ing anxiously in every direction. In the dim distance, in the 
direction of the canyon, he catches a glimpse of a disappear- 
ing object, fluttering in the wind, like the end of her shawl. 

Gladsomely relieved, he takes a deep breath, and then fol- 
lows in the wake as fast as his old feet can carry him. Once 
more he stops for a breathing-spell, and again he shuffles 
along. "Esther! Esther!" he shouts. Already he catches 
up with her, but, lo — his coming draws her back from an 
indistinct, powerfully urging impulse, back into her only 
dimly conscious shadow-life. The invisible thread tying her 
heart-strings to the soul of Max had been guiding her hasten- 



Autumn Leaves 39 

ing steps, but the good old man's intrusion had broken that 
thread. 

A terrible change is reflected in her wan face. With mute 
pleading Tannenbaum looks into her eyes. But these are 
filling with hot tears. "Why don't you let me go where my 
feet want to carry me — so light — ever on and on — to the 
mountains, whence a call comes to my heart?" "You would 
perish, my daughter. Come back with me to the house; your 
child is crying for you!" "The child is crying?" she repeats, 
still half under the compelling power to go on. With gentle 
persuasion the old man prevails in the end, and together they 
walk back toward the house. 

* * * 

Max, in the course of his recuperation, becomes almost his 
old self again, and is filled with an urge for activity — a craving 
to mingle once more with crowds, and he considers leaving 
his present abode. The hermit-life has no more satisfaction 
for him. The thought of leaving fascinates him with the lure 
of an unrevealed promise. "Yes, I shall go, — I owe some- 
thing to mankind, and something is owed to me. I have a 
mission. I cannot pass all my life amongst lizards and chip- 
munks. Enough!" 

After some brief altercation with the hermit he begins to 
trim his beard, and the host, giving in, helps in the work 
with his own scissors. Filling a knapsack with simple neces- 
saries, the good man hands Max a little pocket-money, and 
they take a hearty leave from each other. 

On Logan's porch the local gossips in pants loaf around 
as usual. Demuth is also there, looking over the pages of a 
newspaper. Instinctively he looks up, and his eyes meet Max, 
who is coming down the road. Quickly he rises and goes to 
meet him, and in a friendly greeting they pass the arms over 
each other's shoulder. "Where are you going?" asks Demuth 
of him. "To the city — to Los Angeles." "Won't you step 
into my house for a while?" "No, thanks, I don't want to 
lose any time." 

A wrinkled, ragged human derelict, sitting on the rail, sidles 
up to Max, malignantly looking him over, and spits out a big 
quid of tobacco. Max, with a smile, gently pats him on the 
shoulder and turns again to the carpenter to say good-bye, 
Demuth wishing him good luck on the way. The town, loafers 
nudge each other with their shoulders or elbows, commenting 
under their breath on "chickens coming home to roost," or 
the like. But no one pays any attention to them. 

Tannenbaum, with the child, is engaged in play. The little 
tot holds up to his inspection a glittering stone, and as he 
bends over to see better the shining object, Max strides by, 
unseen and unheeded, the invisible gates of the soul not stand- 
ing open to all persons at all times. 

Our wanderer progresses only a few steps, when a passing 
automobile offers him a ride, which he gladly welcomes. 
Demuth, from the store porch, follows with pensive eyes the 
machine gradually disappearing in the distance. 



40 Autumn Leaves 

The door of the little house opens, and out steps, slowly, 
Esther, dressed in white, with eyes wide open like in a trance. 
She looks, and looks, and then she kneels down in front of 
Tannenbaum, with the plaintive query: "Maxim! Oh, where 
is Maxim?" But the good old man only shakes sadly his 

head, and then they both weep. 

* * * 

The hermit reads in a book, but his thoughts are more with 
the friend who parted from him. A sigh escapes from his 
lips; he looks about, forlorn, and realizing that he is alone 
indeed, he tries to resume his reading in earnest. 

Between two pages of the book in his hand he finds a 
slip of paper written with eight lines in Russian characters. 
Uneasily he shakes his head: "Poor Max, he might need it. 
I'll hurry down into the valley; he probably stays with De- 
muth for the night." Quickly he makes up his mind, puts 
on his sandals, and is on his way to the little town. 

Arrived there, he rushes to Demuth's home, panting, calling 
out even before he opens the door: "Hello, Demuth!" The 
carpenter looks upon him astonished: "What are you breath- 
ing so hard for?" "Oh, I have been in a hurry. Where is 
Max?" "He is not with me. He did not even want to step 
into my house for a minute. An auto picked him up. By 
this time he must be, already, quite a distance from here. 
What is the matter?" "Ah, perhaps nothing serious. I found 
a piece of paper with writing. I think it is in Russian. May- 
be he needs it. I am sorry that I am unable to read it." And 
with a hopeless resignation he looks in front of him. 

Demuth thinks for a moment and then speaks up eagerly: 
"Do you want to read it? That is easy! Russian people live 
quite nearby in town who have only recently arrived." "Well, 
but that would be unfair. Yet, on the other hand, I am quite 
anxious to know what is in it." With the remark: "Well, 
suit yourself," Demuth resumes the work of cutting up some 
cabbage for his next meal. In a sudden decision the hermit 
calls out: "All right! Lead me to them!" "Come on!" — 
and out they go. 

Esther receives them. Tannenbaum is absorbed deeply in 
a book, but at the arrival of the callers an undefinable, terri- 
ble unrest seizes his soul. She asks them to be seated. The 
hermit casts a glance upon Demuth, who understanding^ 
rises from his chair and leaves the room with an excuse. 

Like a precious little bird the slip of paper is fingered ten- 
derly by the man of solitude, and then proffered to Esther 
with the query: "Could you, perhaps, read this for me? It 
is in Russian." She reaches for it. Tannenbaum looks up to 
listen. She sits down and proceeds: 

"Where the roses exhale fragrance, 
Where my footsteps are effaced, 
Where dry shrubs and thorns do penance, 

Tears I sowed and pain I raised. 
Where the sounds of youth are ebbing, 



Autumn Leaves 41 

Those tracks are lost, long, long ago; 
But where mad winds are throbbing, sobbing 
Through all eternity, I go. 

— Max Blochmann." 

The hand with the sheet sinks down into her lap, and as 
she leans back into her seat, the whole gamut of emotions 
from hope to despair, from fear to exquisite joy and happi- 
ness, pass over her pallid features. Then of a sudden she 
frowns and closes her eyes tight. "Ah! — too much light! It 
blinds me — it blights my soul!" she whispers. With the left 
hand she passes over her eyes and then presses it to her 
heart, as her chin sinks slowly upon her breast. "I am so 
tired, — I want to sleep, — I am so happy! Maxim! My Maxim! 
Found at last!" she whispers. She feels something tears to 
pieces in her innermost soul; and as time and eternity vanish 
to her, the little worn-out heart unable the stand the pressure 
any longer, she closes her eyes forever. 

Tannenbaum rushes up to her side despairingly, trying to 
bring her back to consciousness. The dumbfounded hermit 
looks about in the room for some water, at last locating some. 
But Esther's sufferings are ended, — mad winds can harm her 
no more. The Jewish poet sinks at the feet of the poor body, 
sobbing bitterly. The hermit steps backward, hesitating, with 
agonized features, pressing both clenched fists over his heart. 
At the door he hastens out, hunted by furies. 

Her last resting-place, a flat piece of desert-land, with cacti 
and rocks here and there, and mountains in the distance. 
Tannenbaum throws the last shovel of soil upon the fresh 
grave, lifts the child up from the ground, and rocking it in 
his arms, he tries to pacify it: "Sh-h! Don't cry, you little 
orphan of the world." A few sympathetic people from the 
valley, with Demuth, and the hermit with bowed head in 
mystical mourning, bear mute witness to the desert's failure to 
answer to the crying of the child. 

Tannenbaum turns his sad and lifeless face to the hermit; a 
smile, bitter like gall, playing upon his lips. "You! You!" 
groans his heart. "You holy one have killed her!" The chin 
of the hermit sinks upon his penitent breast. A milder ex- 
pression overspreads the poet's face: "No, poor man, it is 
not your fault," and he hands him a booklet from his pocket, 
Esther's verses, which the hermit takes with reluctant fingers. 
With the child in his arms, Tannenbaum turns and walks off, — 
a tall, black, lonesome shape in the glaring sunshine. Grad- 
ually, the mourners scatter, and the hermit remains alone at 
the new sand-hill heaped over a broken heart. 

Late the same evening the hermit is bent over the small 
volume of verses handed him by Tannenbaum. He looks at 
Esther's picture, pensively muttering: "A virgin soul! A 
virgin!" and then he resumes the interrupted reading. In the 
canyon soughs a storm-wind; the heaven is heavy-hearted, 
about to shed its blessing tears. The hermit reads on, and the 
farther he advances in the pages the expression of his face 



42 Autumn Leaves 

undergoes a tremendous change. He casts bewildered looks 
in every direction of his abode, all of a sudden, almost magic- 
ally, a stranger to his environment, muttering to himself: 
"What am I doing here?" 

A painful awakening flashes through his brain. "Hell!" 
he exclaims, with right hand clutching his chin, in terror of 
his own self. Alert he rises, scans, with astonished looks, the 
holy pictures on the walls, saying: "What? Has that kept 
me here for these thirteen years?" And he begins feverishly 
to tear them off. 

In this work of haste his fingers touch accidentally the scis- 
sors on the table. Seizing them with a firm hand, he begins 
to trim his long beard, cuts off the curls that hand low down 
over his shoulders, and what he prided himself in sinks to the 
ground like a shower of golden autumn-leaves. 

"Thirteen years! Thirteen years!" he mutters, and laughs 
hysterically. "Let's make an end of this farce! Where is the 
kerosene?" He reaches for the bottle in the corner and spills 
its contents upon bed, and walls. Then he grabs the lamp 
from the table, applies its flame to the kerosene-soaked spots 
of the room, snatches the precious booklet off the table, and 
runs like a madman out of the blazing house. 

He speeds on in the direction of the valley, in his mad 
rush stumbling and falling, tearing his clothes, and cutting 
his limbs on cacti and thorn-bushes Panting for breath he halts, 
and faces the flames enveloping his abode: "Burn! Burn, 
you den of darkness! At last you give me light!" And his 
features are overspread with a joy as if the burning flames 
were fanning his soul afire with a cool, refreshing breeze. 
The walls collapse with a brilliant display of sparks, and dark- 
ness descends upon the scene. 

The early sun gilds the mountain-tops, and glistens in the 
dewdrops of the desert-cemetery. The hermit-that-was rouses 
himself from his vigil at the foot of the grave of Esther, the 
booklet of verse in hand, — a precious heritage. With exulta- 
tion he looks up to the morning sun, then tenderly down to 
the new grave, and calls out: "At last I have found myself, 
and the work cut out for me, — thanks to you, broken-heart-at- 
rest! God is ever with the strongest, the winners in life. My 
stand shall be at the side of the losers in life, the weak." High 
he lifts his head and strides into the world of action. 

* * * 

Mere man provides for homeless cats and shelterless dogs, 
but seldom for the unemployed. With the knapsack on the 
back, Max roams aimless through the streets of the Angel 
City, and ever tighter he draws his belt for quite obvious 
reasons. 

A certain hotel in Main Street, conducted by the Volun- 
teers of America, "fifteen cents a night, with free bath," it 
says. And when the small price is not forthcoming you 
stretch out your limbs in the Reading-Room, upon a bench, 
dreaming your dreams of prosperity, with some magazine or 



Autumn Leaves 43, 

the elbow as pillow, breathing in the noxious exhalations of 
dirty spittoons and a filthy floor. But that can only be done 
when the manager is in a good humor, which is but rarely 
the case. Possessor of a funny-front, he tries to keep it up 
by overeating; he vents the ensuing suffering upon the unfor- 
tunate ^ home-and-penny-less, whom he bounces unceremoni- 
ously into the street. Max gets the experience of such im- 
polite treatment. He picks himself up in indignation, puts his 
hands in his pockets, crosses the street leisurely, unheeding 
of the angry tootings of automobiles in a hurry, and turns 
around the corner, going West. 

* * * 

Sunset Park is a fine place to be in if one is not hungry. 
A healthy being sickens at the hunger-medicine. It is late 
in the evening when Max sits down upon one of the benches. 
He watches the hazy, fleeting shadows for a while, and then 
loses himself in thought. 

A larger shadow detaches itself from the shifting, foggy 
background and glides up toward the same bench. A trem- 
bling seizes Max at the sound of the disconnected mutterings 
and curses which pain his ears like the scratching of a nail 
on a window-pane. And the newcomer falls heavily into her 
seat. We recognize in her, Sorka Feinberg. Slightly under 
the influence of liquor, in gaudy attire of coarse temptation, 
she wipes her nose with one sleeve, and keeps on neaping 
abuse upon a blonde man who obsesses her muddled brain. 

Max turns his face sideways, bending forward, to get a 
good look of her; but all his vision can picture is a sullied 
window-frame, with cobwebbed. broken pane, the gaping holes 
srtuffed up with filthy rags. Her alcoholic breath fills him 
with nausea, and he moves away a little. She raves on, that 
the park belongs to her; that people are tearing off all its 
flowers, and that the idea of four hundred buttons on women's 
shoes was stupid. Then she weeps and begins to beat her 
breast. Gazing up to her neighbor, she mumbles again: 
"Stupid! I need no silk corset! Stupid!" Max feels power- 
less to go away. 

One more shade condenses to the left, takes definite form 
approaching, and sits down in calm and silence, next to Max, 
surveying the two other corners present of the triangle of 
life. Neatly dressed; in the thirties, of medium size, brunet; 
•a white shawl carefully folded around his neck; with eyes 
athirst for Schopenhauer's Nirvana. 

He begins to smoke, and offers Max also a cigarette, who 
declines with thanks. "Take one and smoke," insists the new 
arrival, "or you are a dog!" Max raises his eyebrows sharply: 
"Why am I a dog?" "Because that is my opinion of man- 
kind in general. To hell with it! Tomorrow all will be ended. 
By rights I should spit any man in the face, — yet I offer him 
a ci^a^tte!" The fallen woman is silenced, and repeats with 
a petulant voice: "Stupid!" 

"What is your trouble, stranger?" turns Max to the disciple 



44 Autumn Leaves 

of Schopenhauer. The interrogated man leans back into his 
seat, crosses his legs one over the other: "Oh, I am all right," 
he comments, reaches in his coat pocket, calmly pulls out a 
revolver and adds: "You see, it is my birthday. At one 
o'clock it was that I saw the light of the world. It is the 
hour I hate, and at that hour I shall pass out again." The 
woman again mutters: "Stupid!" 

Max asks him if he is tired of life, getting for answer: 
"Yes; the devil take it all!" "Stupid!" — it sounds once more 
from the woman. 

The stranger strikes a match to re-light his cigarette, casts 
a sidelong glance upon Max, querying: "Down and out? 
Hungry? Eh?" "Yes, hungry!" "And you don't delve into 
garbage cans?" "No, not yet." The woman utters another 
"Stupid!" with babbling lips. 

Max heaves a sigh over the sufferings of mankind. "I ask 
you once more, are you hungry?" And Max snaps back: 
"Didn't I tell you? Yes, very hungry!" "And in the garbage 
cans?" "That I cannot do!" "Stupid!" — it sounds again from 
his left. 

This time it catches the ear of the stranger, who eagerly 
bends forward with the words: "Ah, you have your sweet- 
heart with you?" Max does not answer, and for a moment 
silence descends upon them, each pondering over the irony 
of fate. 

"Do you want money?" asks the newcomer, pulls a wad of 
banknotes from his breast pocket, stuffing it into the pockets 
of Max with the expostulation: "Take it, or I'll throw it 
away; you are welcome to it." And then he laughs bitterly, — 
the laughter of death in the aspect of puny life. "Stupid !' % ' 
falls in like an echo the unconscious comment of the fallen 
woman. 

The prospective candidate for suicide rises from his seat, 
stretches himself to his full length, and exclaims: "All is 
done and ready. Now, I assign everything to hell. Mankind 
seems so rotten that even in the face of death I can throw a 
bone. Good night!" He proffers a thin, shadowy hand. Max 
looks up to him in pity. "Wait! I am so sorry for you. Let 
us go together." With these words he bends over the woman, 
slips a bill into her hand, to the accompaniment of a mumbled 
"Stupid!" of the derelict, rises from the bench, and together 
they walk away. 

The woman gets up and proceeds toward the lamp-post, 
where she lifts the note to her eyes for a closer inspection: 
"Five! That's right, you stupid idiots!" Upon her face are 
scant remnants of past beauty; the hair is disheveled; the 
blouse partly unbuttoned, displaying a youthful throat. The 
skirt is not laced, the hand inadvertently slipping into that 
wrong opening when she tries to pocket the bill; and thus 
she reaches deep and deeper, only stopping in the hopeless 
attempt with another: "Stupid! After all, the old place is 
the best!" With that remark she tries to slip the bill into 
her stocking. As luck has it, she wears men's socks. For a 



Autumn Leaves 45 

moment she ponders; then, in quick decision, pulls off a shoe, 
puts in the bank note, and, hugging shoe and all to her bosom, 
she tipsily totters off toward the entrance of the park, swal- 
lowed by the gray shadows of the night. 

* * * 

At the corner of Sixth Street, just outside of the park, 
Max and his companion come to a stop. "If that is the case 
I have nothing more to say," he exclaims, with a depressed 
voice. "Enough! I am utterly disgusted with everything. 
When you go uptown you'll find my diary at the given ad- 
dress; that will tell you all about it. Let's shake hands and 
say good-bye, forever. Good night, then" — and he passes on. 

Max stands like transfixed by awful thoughts until the 
sounds of the steps of the suicide-to-be are muffled by the 
distance; only in his ears still throbs the word — "forever." A 
vivid pain tortures his body and soul. He turns slowly into 
Sixth Street, walking East; but the realization that a human 
being is about to go down to oblivion brings him to a sudden 
halt. His hair stands on end, and he struggles to cast a heavy 
weight off his chest in order to be able to get relief in shriek- 
ing out his pain and terror. In the end he begins to run 
through the silent streets with horrified shouting: "A man is 
going down! Help! Help! Make a light! Awake! A man 
is going down!" 

A policeman rushes around the corner: "Say, what's the 
matter with you? Are you sick?" And he tries to treat him 
with his club. "No, I am well enough; I only got scared at 
something." "You bum Go, and beat it mighty quick." A 
street car passes by and is boarded by Max, who takes a seat 
in the front, in the neighborhood of three types. 

Behind him sits a man who takes life different from the 
general run. Fairly drunk, a cap way back of the forehead, a 
blond forelock protruding, a flat nose, small, shifting, bead- 
like eyes, the eyebrows shaggy but thinned out, pock-marked 
cheeks, the teeth and the moustache of the same color. This 
bibulous head belongs to a six-foot body. He breaks into a 
song, and with his fingers he begins to beat time upon the 
back of Max: "Trala-trila-lala! I lost my wife — trili-trala!" 
Max turns around his head: "You lost your wife?" "Yes; she 
died — tralala-tram-tram." 

To the right of Max are two different specimens, each in a 
separate seat. The first is a nightwatchman with his lunch- 
box, apparently all nose, ears, and tobacco-pipe. He counts 
some coins and exclaims in disgust: "Missing again — by 
gorra! She'll die with that habit, or my name ain't Mike!" 
He gets wrought up over the discovery, and in order not to 
get in bad humor, he starts some deep-breathing exercises, 
filling himself with air to look like a barrel, -exhaling with 
the sound of a pair of bellows in action, and finally gasping 
from stabbing pains in his lower back: "It is the bunk, that 
Mazdaznan Method! It is all the bunk!" 

The other sample of humanity, back of him, is a Jewish 



46 Autumn Leaves 

junk-dealer, short and rotund like a pumpkin, a more or less 
shapeless loaf of dough; maybe he'll be perfect in the next 
incarnation! He is dressed in the latest style of Paris. One 
eye is partly overgrown with flesh, but that does not hamper 
him in doing thorough ocular work over the pictures of movie 
actresses in a magazine. 

He smacks his lips, his Panama hat rhythmically moving 
up and down: "Ai — ai — ai! Some womens! — regular peaches! 
A sin to look on them — enough!" With this he lays down the 
magazine and tries to look out of the window. Temptation! 
Even the hands seem to have eyes — the fingers caressingly 
close over the pictures, and again he holds the offending pages 
up to his eye: "Gewalt! — you are naughty, Abraham! Shame 
upon you!" And he slings the object of this worked-up hor- 
ror out of the window, wiping his hands, mad over his 
weakness. 

Obeying seme impulse, Max steps off the car, and the 
drunken Pole does likewise. It is late downtown. Most of 
the stores are closed; but that does not hamper the business 
of an old man who cries out the service of his telescope, at 
ten cents a peep at the moon. 

A drunkard, his coat torn in the back up to his neck, pays 
the price, takes a look, and shoots down three moons at one 
peep. The bibulous man at the heels of Max, in a helpful 
mood, slaps the star-gazer on the back, and down they go — 
gazer, telescope, moons and all, while the provender of pop- 
ular astronomy raises a howl of distress. 

Max helps to place the' luckily, undamaged moon-shooter 
back upon its tripod. The owner is exuberant of thankful- 
ness, filling the ears of Max with moon-lore galore, and offers 
him a free demonstration, which is declined in firm kindness. 

The exhilarated astronomical amateurs, in the meanwhile, 
stand, leaning back to back, the one disclaiming to see any- 
thing at all, while the other keeps on counting moons with his 
fingers, moons that come and go ad infinitum. 

After getting from the scientific peddler some information 
on where to get a room at a reasonable price, Max leaves the 
free show and goes on his way. 

* * * 

Some months later. Be careful and look out for your steps — 
the stairs are rotten. And protect your nose with a handker- 
chief; but do not rely on the railings. A step or two more, — 
and there you are! The door to the right leads to Max's 
dwelling place. 

It is evening. A small gas jet casts a poor light upon the 
gray furniture, a dirty window, a bed, a table, a few copy- 
books and books. Upon the table a milk-bottle with a few 
carnations. Max examines a pair of torn trousers, and reaches 
for needle and thread sticking in the wall. 

From the next door rings out the song of a beautiful mel- 
ancholy voice. It is Lilith, whose life is a tragedy in itself. 
She has married a man of learning, who digs himself in, all 



Autumn Leaves 47 

day, in his piles of books. They have a thirteen-year-old son, 
who is continually sick. Yes, she was an artist of much prom- 
ise, at her time, and then she made the mistake of her life. 
She sits at her child's bedside, pale like wax, with some 
traces left of a lost beauty, and she sings her beloved soothing 
song to put the little boy to sleep. The bedroom is small, 
poorly furnished, and dark. Through a crack of a door a tor- 
turing streak of light filters in from the adjoining room, where 
her husband is absorbed in his books. She looks upon the 
Will-o'-the-wisp, upon the child, and then into her own deso- 
late heart; and she sings, and weeps, in turn, her grief, her 
voice and her yearning into a hauntingly sweet accord is 
boun d to drive anyone into insanity, — anyone but him! 

He, in the adjoining room, does not hear: Mr. Daniels, all 
forehead, with eye-sockets, to all appearances, molded with 
a first, the five-foot tall body draped in a long robe that reaches 
to his knees; the naked, hairy feet hidden in slippers; the head, 
crammed already with knowledge, searches and seeks. 

Melancholy and lonesomeness grip the heart of Max, and 
the song seems familiar to him. "And who," he asks himself, 
"has suffered so mu^h as to have to sing a tune like this? 
Who can it be?" He does not know his neighbors, yet he 
feels drawn to them as by a psychic magnet. He decides 
upon making their acquaintance. 

Rap, rap; Mr. Daniels opens the door, stretches out his 
heavy head, balancing at the end of a long, thin neck; and 
Max makes a courteous bow: "Good evening. I am your 
neighbor. I am lonesome; am I welcome?" Mr. Daniels 
smiles: "Sure; step* inside." 

Next to the door stands a box, with a pail of water on top — 
plumbers are too high-priced! Not far from it a pile of non- 
descript rubbish; on the floor potato-peelings and orange- 
skins; rubbish, rubbish everywhere; all of it grotesquely in- 
termixed with books, books, and more books; books on the 
table, books on chairs, books in boxes and on boxes, books 
on the floor, with filth and rubbish, and over it all floods mel- 
lowly, from the other room, the sad lullaby. 

Mr. Daniels surveys his visitor critically, and with a smile 
of inspiration he delves into one of the shelves, returning 
with two volumes. "Ah, young man, I have just the right 
kind of books for you. Here is 'The Gadfly' by Voynich, a 
mighty powerful story; and here is a masterpiece of soul- 
analysis, "The Devil's Children," by Dostojewsky. Take them 
and you'll enjoy the reading immensely." 

Max reaches for the volumes mechanically, but his ears 
listen to the soaring song of sadness; his soul blends with the 
tune, and his heart weeps with Lilith. He asks Mr. Daniels: 
"From what poet is that song Madam is singing?" "Poet?" 
exclaims Mr. Daniels in eagerness, lifting his body to its full 
height, his features beautified by the rapturous enthusiasm of 
a connoisseur. "Poet, you ask? Why, that was written by 
a woman. Too bad she had to die so young; she might have 



48 Autumn Leaves 

become the greatest poetess of all times! Oh, ehe was a 

genius! Wait a minute — I'll show you." And with these 

words he delves into another shelf, digging, while Max listens 
to the simple words of the slumber-song: 

"Cry, cry, little one; 
Winds, cheer my little son! 
Winds, blow — blow — blow — blow; 
Carry far my flicker-snow. 
Float — float in the air, 
Through gray and misty atmosphere. 
Sobbing winds — oh, what a choir! 
Souls, they fade, for evermore." 

"Here it is!" Mr. Daniels brings him back to earth. "Some 
poetess!" And hands him the little volume. Max opens it, 
and his eyes meet Esther's picture on the first page. The 
world turns black before his eyes, and he feels like torn to 
shreds and scattered broadcast all over the world. "Ah! The 
cup is overflowing!" he mutters, the book slips from his fin- 
gers, and he almost collapses in a faint, trying to hold on to 
the table in his fall, nearly overturning it with all its heaps 
of books. 

Mr. Daniels is quite frightened by the inexplicable incident, 
helps Max to his feet, leads him across the hallway to his 
room, places him upon the bed, and applies cold water to his 
forehead and temples, entirelv at a loss to understand what 
has actually happened. 

Max regains his consciousness, slowly sits up in bed and 
buries his face in his hands, in an abandon of grief. Mr. 
Daniels is unable to get the meaning of it all, shakes his head 
in pity, and, not finding any appropriate words to say, he 
softly walks out and leaves Max alone with his sorrow. 

Night, and a dream! He wanders miles and miles through 
a long, high-arched, subterranean gallery. At last he reaches 
a doorway leading into an immense hall, lighted by an orange 
glow. It is all empty but for a lounge draped in green in its 
center. He reposes on it his tired body and closes his eyes. 

Two shapes of women, adorned in white, detach themselves 
from the background and approach. One lays a sheet of paper 
and a goose-quill upon his breast. The other form stands at 
his side, with gentle arm lifts up his head, and holds a goblet 
to his lips, saying: "Drink! This will do you good — heart- 
and-soul drops mixed together!" He drinks with a visible 
struggle in his face. At last he succeeds in opening his eyes, 
and finds himself alone in his room. He rubs the sleep from 
his eyes, walks to the table, opens the gas-jet wide, and sits 
down to write. 

That night through he suffered the pain which heralds the 
birth of a creator. With wounded heart and soul he writhe9 
on the floor, the fingers closed tight over the written pages, 
staring upon the manuscript. His pressed lips slowly move in 
an almost inaudible, agonized muttering: "Is there a God? — 
Is there a God?" All the senses of his tortured body are 



Autumn Leaves 49 

strained taught like ropes in their intent search for an answer 
through all the depth and width of the universe, his quivering 
body twisting like a worm. But all in vain: — all that comes 
back to him is the faint echo of his unanswered, anxious query: 
Is there a God?" 

Fold him to your living bosom, good mother night, witness 
of his struggle. Give him peace, — oh quiet night! 

Time passes on. A park, a bench, the sun up high, and Max 
with a pencil and paper. Our friend is not aware, as yet, that 
a fratricidal war is dividing the world into two gigantic, hos- 
tile camps. Purified in the forges of pain, having lived in the 
deepest recesses of life, he seems to have reached its summit, 
about to solve its mysteries. Only untainted love flows from 
his soul. "I forgive thee, mankind, for thou art sick!" With 
these hearty words he has finished a tale, and presses the 
manuscript to his heart. His furrowed, martyred features are 
laved in a softening spiritual fluid, as if bathed in the sweet 
fragrance of flowers, and he feels like a man re-born. 

But his re-birth occurs at a bad time, at a time consuming 
mankind in the fires of a man-made hell. He knows nothing 
thereof, — a providence seems to have kept from him the tid- 
ings that two enemies have been calling up, in agony, to the 
same God. 

"Extra! — Extra!! — The Germans invade .... !!" calls ou 
the shrill voice of a street vender. Max strains his wits to 
comprehend the meaning of the man's call, but no inner chord 
in him vibrates with the intelligence of the portentious news, 
and, pencil in hand, he resumes some retouching of his story. 

On the bench opposite of Max are seated two well-dressed, 
elderly men; one of them with an "ear-crutch" into which his 
companion tries to shout the latest war news. On the path 
between the benches a splendidly-built little boy marches on in 
a quick-step; — arms and feet in fullest athletic harmony, pre- 
paring his little body for the profession of a good, healthy re- 
spectable loafer. 

The man shouting the news to his deaf companion loses pa- 
tience oyer his failure to make himself understood, throws the 
paper disgusted on the ground, and totters off, rubbing his 
aged and aching back. The man with the "ear-crutch" picks 
the paper up, adjusts his glasses, and tries to read the news 
himself, moving the sheet to and from his eyes in vain effort. 
The type is too small for his walking-glasses. Dismayed he 
tears off the corner with the latest telegrams, and painfully 
hobbles off. 

An officer of the law, living up to the full measure of his du- 
ties, is on the look-out for slackers Max looks certainly suspi- 
cious to him. A young man to sit and write! — that can't be 
permissible; — young men must fight in these days! He watches 
him through one eye, takes a better look at him with the other 
and then steps up to him. 

Intuitively Max looks up with an inquiring glance. "Do you 



50 Autumn Leaves 

have a registration card?" "A what?" "A card." Max shakes 
his head: "I have no cards." "I am an officer, — jokes aside, — 
show me your card!" "Which card?" Say, you saphead; 
you are not going to make a fool out of me!" "Max looks at 
him with increased curiosity. "That's the limit!" bellows the 
policeman, "come on you slacker!" Max is utterly bewildered 
and as yet unable to figure it out, why an officer should drag 
him along by the arm, and heap abominations upon him. 

* * * 

In camp they can not do anything with him, because he is a 
being by all evidences devoid of a consciousness of his own 
body, absolutely unable to stop the unceasing working of his 
brain. 

Right back of "No Man's Land." — Max peels potatoes. It 
feels good to sit in the open, upon a bench, cutting the pota- 
toes mechanically into a large pan; — the head needs not take 
part in the work. 

Not far from him three dough-boys are busy cleaning their 
rifles; — a Yankee, a Mexican and an Irishman. The Mexican 
throws an angry look upon Max. "Boys!" he exclaims, "this 
holy ghost gets my goat. Let's beat him up; — he looks too 
healthy to trim vegetables. There must be a nigger in the 
woodpile." The Yankee seconds the motion, but the Irish- 
man is humane and declines to have any part in the "sport." 
"Let's go to it," calls out the Mexican, walks up to Max, takes 
him by the arm, and leads him a little distance. 

"Let me get a swing at him first!" proposes the Yankee. 
"Go ahead! — he may not like chili!" Max stands quiet as if 
listening to an argument that did not concern him in the least. 
The Yankee places himself in a fighting position, now advanc- 
ing the right fist, and now, again, guarding with the left, as if 
his opponent were about to attack him. But, far from so 
doing, Max merely gazes upon him quite unconcerned. He 
receives a blow in the face which wakens a subtle understand- 
ing, but as yet he seems undecided for any action. The 
Yankee wants to give him another, but his awakening con- 
science won't let him: "Hang it! — I can't do it, — I have no 
cause for it!" 

The Mexican chimes in: "You sentimental fool! — I'll give 
him the finishing touches!" And the man from across the Rio 
Grande, to whom beatings come natural like the licking of his 
chops with a shifty tongue, begins to work his bunched-up 
fingers, as if he had dummy before him. When a fist comes 
close to his face, Max dodges with his head, not of strategy, 
but bv instinct, and by experience which tells him that blows 
hurt. 

The Irishman is sick of the whole affair, praying in his heart 
that Max might get a grip upon himself. When the body suf- 
fers too much, the instinct of self-defense is wakened in the 
end. The looks of Max try to fathom the eye-balls of the 
man who hurts him, and his eyes are fascinated by and fas- 
tened upon by the bare throat of his tormentor. A violent 
blow in the face, that makes the blood spurt, rouses the slum- 



Autumn Leaves 51 

Bering beast in him. His hands rise up to take a part in the 
fray. In the next moment his fingers are, like iron tongues, 
dug deep and tightened around the throat of his antagonist, 
all of it happening so unexpectedly sudden that, when the two 
astonished companions are able to come to the Mexican's as- 
sistance, he is squirming already upon the ground like a 
snake. Fire seems to issue from the eyes of Max, and only 
after a number of heavy blows upon the head, administered by 
the Yankee, he releases the limp body. The tw T o companions 
try to revive the Mexican. 

Max stands rigid, his eyes looking into the distance, absent- 
minded, in search, as it may be, of his own lost soul that is 
weeping over his sudden transformation from man to beast. 
The pair of soldiers succeed in getting their mate back to con- 
sciousness, and they lead him away, leaving the so sadly 
awakened dreamer to his waking thoughts of fighting actuality. 

Reaction sets in. From this day on the change in Max brings 
•forth ever more pronounced symptoms. The motions of his 
body become quick and wiry; compressed are his lips, and 
piercing his lighting looks. His assistants in the field kitchen 
begin to get a holy fear if his lean body When one of them 
gives him an order, enforced by a poke in the ribs, he nearly 
pays for it with his life, only saved by a close margin by his 
companions, who have to tear the fingers of Max from his 
throat. 

* * * 

After that incident they steer clear of him, avoiding his 
very sight, and in the end Max is put in his true place, in the 
trench, with rifle and bayonet. 

And the killing becomes to him a matter of fact like the 
profession of a hangman. A deep furrow is engraved in his 
forehead; blackened are his hollow cheeks; and the ribs pro- 
truding under the discolored skin, heave and sink with the 
breath that gives death, not life. 

To the left of him is the Irishman, whom we recognize 
again, — a head taller than Max, but a weaker specimen of 
death-dealing flesh-and-blood machinery. The Irishman 
quaffs draughts of new life by sidelong glances upon the 
alert, lithe body of Max, which is restless like mercury. The 
hands of his companion seem to him death-dealing electrodes. 

At the right side of Max cringes and whimpers a coward, 
shrinking, though more under the looks of contempt of Max 
than of fear of the enemy. When that look lashes his puny 
soul, he grips his rifle feverishly, muttering under his breath: 
"Pshagreff!" 

A piece of shrapnell strikes the Irishman in the arm, tear- 
ing off the sleeve, and causing a nasty flesh-wound, — a thing 
to frighten the strongest. But when he meets the beast-look 
of Max, he grabs his rifle again, grits his teeth, and mutters: 
"Devil!— He is a Devil. Oh, he is Death itself— begorrah. — 
I'll be bleeding to death!" A glancing bullet plows through 
his scalp, tearing off his hat, and another pierces his fore- 



52 Autumn Leaves 

head. He presses a hand to his head and crumbles to the 
ground. 

The coward on the other side of Max tries to sneak away, 
when he sees the shock-lines of the enemy approach, but Max 
finishes him like one would a speciment of loathsome vermin. 

"Oh! — me mother!" groans the son of Erin. Max turns 
around and looks down upon his comrade of arms. Again the 
words, "Me mother!" The mother-call reaches out for him 
with an invisible hand, stirring up in its deepest the half-dead 
heart. "Mother!" comes from his slowly moving lips, an 
echo to the dying man's exclamation. "Mother," — it seems 
to ring all about him. Weaker and weaker becomes the voice 
of the wounded man as he repeats: "Mother! — oh, Jesus! — 
Mother!" Max kneels down, lifts the head of his companion 
upon his knee, and puts the canteen with water to the lips 
of the dying man, who fixes his puzzled, quiet eyes upon his 
friend, the lips still muttering inaudibly. 

Under this glance the chill glacier-ice over the heart of Max 
melts, and the hard lines of his face soften. The sallow 
drawn face and the ribs of the naked breast, hitherto sym- 
bols of death, relax, and become milder in outline and expres- 
sion. The poet's heart, which once upon a time was capable 
to feel, to suffer, and to forgive, begins to unfold. In his eyes 
shimmers again the deep, mystical transparency of yore. The 
rigidly drawn tenseness of his lips unbends. The harsh, pro- 
truding cheek-bones, and the face of deathly pallor lose their 
aspect of repulsing horror, yea, become attractive. 

There again an expiring whisper: "Mother!" and Max 
awakens to his own self, with an unsteady hand passing over 
his head, removing an invisible heavy burden. The son of the 
Emerald Isle breathes his last, his head slipping from the 
knee of Max, who takes no notice, but sits still, shaken to his 
innermost being by a deep emotion. With the mild eyes of a 
child he looks before him — a man re-born under the mother- 
call of Death. The battlefield disappears from his vision; in 
its place he views a green meadow with fragrant flowers; and 
instead of the whistling bullets and shrieking of shrapnel, the 
sweet perfume of violets and roses, and the songs of birds 
ring in his senses. He feels being absorbed by a light, deli- 
cious pain. "Mother?" it comes from his lips. "Mother, 
where are you? ! !" And he bursts into tears. 

A head appears over the rampart of the trench, — a body 
follows; and a bayonet is poised over the heart of Max. But 
something seems to hold back the messenger of death. It is 
our friend Demuth, in the service of his fatherland. Max 
raises his head. "For God's sake! — You! — Max! Donner- 
wetter!" With these words the carpenter drops his rifle^ and 
sinks upon his knees in front of his friend. As he sees Max 
weeping he can not hold back his own tears. "I am tired of 
killing, Max, — tired, heart and soul!"— and drops his head 
upon the knees of Max, whose hands sink down upon him like 
a blessing. 

Not far from them a shrapnel explodes; the barrage comes 



Autumn Leaves 53 

closer all the time. The second shell shrieks just past them 
like a fiend of hell. The third brings destruction with a deaf- 
ening roar. < A pillar of smoke arises, mingled with parts of 
human bodies — the work of Death, ruthless, and respecting 
none. 

The dense smoke-clouds of death are dispelled and we take 
a deeper look upon what, only a moment before, was a trench 
of the living, and is now but a long-stretched grave of the 
dead and maimed. A few feet distant from the spot of the 
previous scene we see Max again, but hardly we recognize 
him. The power of annihilation have merely played with him. 
As delicately as only they can, in their grim whims of humor, 
they have lifted him and carried him a brief distance. And to 
make sure of the plaything of their pranks, they have half 
buried him in the ground. 

He groans heavily, suffering from a wound below his heart, 
and painfully he tries to move, yet with small success. These 
efforts serve only to tire him out more, and with the little 
strength left he reaches with the one free hand under his torn 
shirt to pull out hands full of blood-soaked earth from over 
his heart. 

With a lost expression he looks around, knits his brow in 
attempts of thought, and all his efforts are bent upon discov- 
ering some traces of his two companions; but in vain. His 
glances meet only the sears and wounds of lacerated Mother 
Earth. "And I live!" he mutters with a hushed voice. "I 
live yet?" The day is spent, and Death is upon his wing to 
pass him by over the field of desolation, leaving him to the 
shadows of the night, and to pains past human endurance. 

* * * 

Let us take a glance into a field hospital. Do you see the 
hero of the glorious battle? A medal is pinned to the lapel 
of the shirt, a shirt which, in its whiteness, is mocked by the 
pallor of the thin face of the sufferer. And since Max is a 
patriotic hero, decorated with a medal, he has a special room 
all to himself. 

And she, the sympathetic nurse, though rather somewhat 
stout, assists him in everything, to the best of her ability. 
The very best she can do for him is to write from his dicta- 
tion. Intelligently, and with kindness, her eyes rest upon the 
helpless literary man. His flow of words is caught quick by 
her trained ears, and the pencil in her hands keeps up with it 
upon the paper. As long as the rhythm of the words slips 
from his lips, she is under his compelling influence. But the 
moment the stream is spent, she again becomes conscious of 
the separateness of their beings, and leaves him because from 
experience she knows already what will follow. 

In moody meditation he remains seated, alone, propped up 
in his pillow-grave, gazes before him, and mutters to himself 
unceasingly the same set of words: "I will tell everything, 
everything, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!" 
Again and again he repeats the sentence, querulously, like a 
schoolboy threatening to squeal on his pals. The monoto- 



54 Autumn Leaves 

nous sound of the phrase seems to fill him with a kind of an 
intoxication. Then pain manifests itself in his drawn features. 
But a stream of soothing tears relieves the tension of his emo- 
tions, and faster, ever faster the hot drops trickle down his 
pallid cheeks. 

The nurse knows also that after the tears he becomes hard, 
like turned into a stone; withering, and mercilessly cutting, 
becomes his look, and to her seemingly meaningless words 
issue from his lips as follows, in a heart-rending sing-song: 
"Winds of madness, leaves of autumn — laws of nature — from 
the cradle to the grave." When at last the lips close, the eyes 
seem to take up, and continue, the unfinished sentences. If 
you can not stand his penetrating gaze of utter despair, then 
turn away. But never in your life will you be able to forget 
these eyes. 

* * * 

Half naked are the trees of Central Park, their despoiled 
twigs and branches are combed by the winds of autumn; 
under that chilling caress they vision the not far-distant win- 
ter, and they tremble and rub against each other with a 
crackling and groaning sound, in fear of the approach of 
death. 

The sun has passed the zenith and casts his slanting rays 
upon the riot of death-colors of trees and shrubs, from yellow 
gold to brown, from blood-red to deep purple, and as the sun- 
rays kiss the doomed leaves these begin to fall, each little leaf 
of life becoming the plaything of mad winds, driven hither 
and thither, restless, aimless, united and, again, torn asunder 
in the life-eddies. The wind gusts, tired ot their game, blow 
the indiscriminately gathered spoils into little mounds, and 
try their strength upon the door and windows of the Museum 
of Art, there being no one to harrass upon the forlorn empty 
benches of the park. 

A dark shape glides slowly through the halls of sculpture 
of the building, led by an invisible hand and thus drawn into 
the still world of creations. As the form approaches we see 
it is Tannenbaum with the orphan upon his arm. He stops 
short at a group of marvelous lifelikeness representing a tall 
man on sandals, a child on the left arms, a bundle in his right 
hand, gazing into the distance: — "The Eternally Wandering 
Jew." The Jewish poet, the little orphan with the questioning 
sad eyes pressed close to his breast, stands transfixed by a 
likeness of fate which heretofore he had not grasped. He 
moves up closer to the masterpiece which seems a replica of 
his own self; with a trembling timid hand he touches caress- 
ingly the statue; his eyes, that have been dry so long, light 
up, for a brief spell, like gold-winged flies fitting by in the 
night, and with a sobbing sigh he exclaims: "II". Then he 
walks backward to a seat into which he sinks, gazing into the 
distance visioned by the chiseled eternal wanderer. To his 
left looms the gigantic cast of Moses, to the right the missive 
brow of King David by Michel Angelo Buonarotti, silent wit- 
ness to the soul-tragedy, and with bowed head the old shrunk- 
en man repeats listlessly the enigmatic syllable: "I!" 



Autumn Leaves 55 

Silent men around the museum building walk about, quiet, 
poised, and heavy, smoking their pipes; their strong arms 
rythmically wield the rakes to gather the little mounds of 
autumn leaves into larger and larger piles, applv a match to 
them, and reduce the little leaf-lives, dropped hefter skelter by 
the way-side, to ashes. Everywhere in the Park we see the 
silver-gray or bluish smoke issuing from funeral pyres 
of burnt offerings of Autumn leaves, and the silent, quiet, 
poised, and heavy men, who smoke their pipes, whose senses,' 
and souls, seem closed to the symbolism of their toil, in 
the eternal circle of life and death, with its endless chain of 
seasons and aimless events. Or are they so silent because 
their heart tells them that they too are mere autumn-leaves, 
playthings of the mad winds of life? Who can tell? 



The world-war for democracy, the nightmare of man's civil- 
ization, is a thing of the past. The boys have come home 
and are being paraded through Fifth Avenue, New York, 
which is packed with seething billows of a humanity worked 
up to the highest pitch of expression of varied emotions. 

A poor Jewish pretzel-woman is caught in the human tor- 
rent, and carried along in spite of all her efforts to extricate 
herself. The pent-up emotions of the festive mass break out 
in a hurricane of shouts of welcome. The boys themselves 
are mostly in grim silence, — too vivid are still in their mem- 
ories the flashlight-pictures of the man-made hell they have 
escaped, not all of them unscarred. Their thoughts are with 
those who were their comrades, and who slumber in strange 
lands, never to return. But the great mass does not see, and 
does not know, and it shouts its hurrahs with an easy heart. 

The pretzel-vending parcel of human driftwood, helplessly 
carried along by the surging tides of humanity, is infected by 
the virus of emotionalism and joins the chorus in yiddish: 
"Hurrah, Hurrah, — may you have strength to live to the 
measure that I have strength to call out hurrah!" And up 
her one free hand goes in a racial gesture, as she shrewdly 
blends enthusiasm with business: "Hurrah! — Nice bretzels; 
who wants bretzels!" Before she can get her hand down 
again in the crushing crowd, a couple of street urchins, watch- 
ing her, and wiggling their way between the legs and squirm- 
ing bodies of their elders, help themselves to the dainty mor- 
sels to a good fill. What do they care for her malediction 
upon the "goys!" 

Her husband does not fare better. Somebody pushes him 
from his usual stand on the sidewalk, and the fun begins, be- 
cause he is not alone but has with him his "limousine," con- 
sisting of a baby carriage. Wrapped in the, once upon a time, 
white rags is not a baby, — that would have fitted well his 
short white apron, with the penny-bank attached, — but a tin- 
pot with hot beans, at two cents a bag. 

In the eddies and whirlpools of the mightily shouting 
throng he is being dragged along, utterly helpless, now push- 



56 Autumn Leaves 

ing, now dragging his vehicle, and now, again, carried side- 
ways with his treasure ^ on wheels, and in that dilemma he 
can not make up his mind if he is to shout the welcome, or 
to praise his wares. 

Finally he gives up all illusions of a free will and, drifting 
along, cleverly combines business with patriotic duty, in a 
quaint medley: "Hurrah! — hurrah! — Hot beans — two cents a 
bag— try them before you fry them! — What for why are you 
pushing me for!" Sly, swift hands reach under the cover of 
the pot, removing its contents in a jiffy, while the helpless 
owner raises a dismal wail: "Oi! — Oi! — Gewalt! — stop it — 
my beans!" And there they go, the whole cart being over- 
turned in the excitement; and then the real fun begins. 
Too bad! 

* * * 

While the crowd divides its interest between the final 
chapter of a gigantic world-tragedy, and the tragic comedy 
of the just related incident, soldiers are leaving the ranks, 
dropping qut one by one, in silence, on the return march, to 
join friends or relatives. Let us follow a few. 

There is one who shamefacedly approaches his mother, and 
it is evident from his actions that he wishes he had lost an 
ear instead of all of his nose, for even his own mother does 
not recognize him on the spot. At last recognition lights up 
in her eyes, mingled with an agonized terror. "Sammy, oh 
my poor Sammy," her heart yearns. And she weeps and 
laughs all in one, while the boy, bashfully covering his dis- 
figured face with one hand, presses her to his heart with the 
other arm, joining in her tears with an embarrassed smile. 
He does not know, as yet, that to his mother's heart he will 
always be the boy he was before the death-missiles of civilized 
man singed and seared his features. 

Here comes another. A piece of shrapnell has split his 
under-lip and left a vertical, deep scar, so that when he opens 
his mouth a merry laugh seems to enliven his face, while 
when he closes the lips, he seems to cruelly mock those pres- 
ent. His sweetheart reveals her true colors. One glance is 
sufficient for her to make up her decision never to marry the 
derelict returned: — to all appearance a hopeless case for any 
peace-conference. But in condescending self-pity, and to 
prove that, after all, she is patriotic to the limit, and also to 
sugar-coat, somewhat her incipient faithlessness to the one 
who had placed duty and loyalty to his native land above love 
for a woman, she asks him, if he has seen President Wilson — 
"Isn't he simply grand?" — and what he, personally, thinks 
concerning the fourteen points. In answer he presses his 
lips together. Is it a wonder, at the sight of his face, that 
she thinks he is a fool, and congratulates herself upon her 
wise decision? 

Max also leaves the ranks, pallid still, yet fully recovered, 
with the medal of valor upon his breast, but no one is there 
of kith and kin to welcome him. A stranger he is amongst 
strangers. The loud acclaim of the immense crowd does not 



Autumn Leaves 57 

warm up, but rather chills his heart, no human bond tying 
him to any of the countless human beings, in whose midst 
fate has thrown him like some flotsam or jetsam. A few 
sympathetic glances inquiringly follow the youthful, and yet 
so aged, agile body of the decorated soldier with the aquiline 
features and the strangely luminous eyes of unutterable sad- 
ness. But they pass on to new delights, or new anxiety, as 
fate might have decreed. Max is not one of them. 

Only the mighty trees of Central Park, partly shorn of 
their autumnal glory, touch a familiar chord in his soul. He 
would have surrendered himself to memories, had not an 
elderly lady in deep mourning stepped up to him and searched 
his features with heart-hungry eyes — with a mother's hope 
against hope. So penetrating is that mother-look that under 
its spell Max wakens from his reverie. Their eyes meet for 
an instant with a subtle mutual understanding of the irre- 
trievable loss of each in life. No, her boj r will never come 
back from the crimson banks of the Marne, and the broken 
heart of Esther is at rest for ever under the little desert- 
hillock of far-away California. In agony Max shrinks back 
and plunges into the crowd as if hunted by avenging furies. 

* * * 

Dear reader: Picture to yourself the last tableau of the 
film of life, reeled off before your eyes. You are at the end 
of a short and narrow, forlorn street in the vast ghetto of 
the Atlantic metropolis, a chasm only four blocks in length. 
There, in the eternal twilight of the congested city, is Tannen- 
baum's abode, and we see him on his way home, leading 
Esther's little boy by the hand. If you can not recognize 
him from the rear, with his tnread-worn, yet neat, overcoat, 
take a quick glance at his features. Does he not appear in 
harmony with the "Gass"? Eook upon tne gray ana time- 
worn house-fronts. Eook upon the roofs, — how richly adorned 
they are with black patches. Does it not appear to you like 
a world about to go bankrupt, because we do not pay our 
debts? And behind the shabby walls seems to be poverty 
enthroned, as auctioneer, to offer the last shirt to the highest 
bidder! 

But few are the passers-by, stopping for a moment to light 
a smoke, or to take some snuff, and then be gone again. And 
what does a soldier want in this neighborhood, who proceeds 
with unsteady gait, in a little distance back of the old man, 
undecided if to walk on, or to return whence he came; but 
unable to shake off the fascination that draws him toward that 
bent back in front of him, with the little child! Under that 
spell he is a boy again himself, maltreated, yet full of sym- 
pathy with all living things, as of old, when his heart used to 
go out to the snow-capped, storm-bent, groaning trees of his 
native land. 

The aged Jewish poet is weighted down under the burden 
of his life that bends his shoulders ever more. Often he feels 
compelled to stop for a little while, to catch his painful, 
weary breath, and the thought passes before his mental vision 



58 Autumn Leaves 

that he might be reading, perchance, the last page of the 
book of his life. This indistinct fear urges him to a greater 
effort to reach the shelter of his abode.. To proceed faster, 
in his eagerness to get on, he relinquishes the hold on the 
hand of the little boy, who is left to himself to follow as best 
he can. But youth's curiosity prompts the child to look about, 
and open-eyed he stands still, his thumb in his mouth when 
he sees of a sudden the strange apparition of a soldier in 
these parts. 

Max is strangely interested in the pair before him, halting 
whenever they stop, and when the old man totters on alone, 
he smilingly walks up to the boy left behind, interrogating 
him: "Hello, little fellow! Why don't you keep up with 
your grandpa?" An unlooked-for answer greets him as fol- 
lows: "I am tired, mister. Won't you carry me, please?" 
The soldier gets a liking for the child and rejoins with a 
smile: "Is that so? — Well, let us try!" In reward the child 
pats his cheek with a chubby hand, and then hugs him with 
his downy, warm, little arms. "You are wise alrignt," exclaims 
the life-intoxicated man in khaki, "but you have to pay me 
just the same with a bushel of kisses, while you are at it!" 

The old man's life-tired heart will not go on as it should. 
With belabored breathing Tannenbaum is forced to interrupt 
his anxious progress. Dizziness fills his head, and he must needs 
close his eyes, with the mumbled plaint: "Downhill it is still 
harder!" Max catches up with him, his eyes a-sparkle over 
the bargain concluded with the child that seems to melt the 
pack-ice of destiny over his heart as b}^ a golden sunshine. 
But a few steps farther he stops in his tracks, and gazes — 
slowly letting the boy to the ground, still gazing — unwilling 
to believe the evidence of his own eyes. 

"Yes, still harder," mumbles forlorn the silver-haired poet. 
"I feel the clouds passing from under me, — they pass so 
swift!" And his body sways from side to side, and to and fro, 
like a reed weighted with dew drops. With a flash recogni- 
tion comes to Max, and full of astonishment he stares upon 
the wavering body, whose eyes seem unwilling to open to 
look any longer upon life's journey and travail. In a mighty 
effort Max arouses himself to rush to assistance with the de- 
spairing cry: "Tannenbaum!" "Yes," echoes dimly a faint 
voice, already from the shores of another land, and what was 
once the Jewish poet sinks limp into his outstretched arms. 

In that moment Max lives through an eternity. He wants 
to gather his child to his heart, but the crumpled body of 
Tannenbaum forbids it. Oh! the pain of it all! He speaks 
to the broken clay in endearing terms, but no answer comes 
to his entreaties, while the child's intuitive wisdom illumi- 
nates the tiny face with a bitter grief for one lost, mingled 
with an ocean of joy, flooding the warm little heart with hap- 
piness over one found at last. 

Max gently lifts up the body of the old man and calls out 
to the child: "Go ahead, boy, you belong to the Future,- — 
show me the way. The Present holds me yet, with not yet 



Autumn Leaves 



59 



accomplished tasks, and a duty I have to fulfill towards the 
clay-shell that held the Past." 

Lo, there is a the replica again of the statuary in the mu- 
seum; the eternal wanderer of Israel, stepping manfully in the 
Present, the burden of the dead Past upon his shoulders, and 
the Future leading him by the hand, pointing with the chubby 
little hand of undying hope into the distance. And thus we 
lose sight of them in the gray shadows of the Gass of the 
Ghetto. Will their pilgrimage through the ages ever end? 
We wonder! 




The author has in preparation for print in the not distant 
future another story entitled: 

ART and LIFE 

A copyrighted synopsis of that story from the pen of 
Mrs. Frances Pemberton Spencer, which appeared in the 
Scenario Bulletin Review of Los Angeles of July 1921, 
under the title: ETERNAL ART 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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